Claim No: IP-2021-000114 - [2023] EWHC 3153 (IPEC)

Mr Chapman left the employment of the Claimant on 12 June 2021 after working his notice period. I am satisfied that he did so to explore more senior opportunities. Mr Chapman says that as Mr Ludley was the Recruitment Manager he had no promotion prospects at the Claimant and left to find a management-level role elsewhere. In cross-examination Mr Ludley denied that he saw Mr Chapman’s departure as an opportunity to present himself, falsely, as the continuing face of the Claimant’s business as he said that he had been thinking about leaving the Claimant before, but said it had “precipitated a decision I was considering making”.

I have already set out the chronology of Mr Ludley’s transfer of the Claimant Spreadsheets and Claimant Client List to himself in May 2021 and his resignation on 16 June 2021 and termination of employment on 22 June 2021. Mr Ludley accepted in cross-examination that his reasons for leaving the Claimant provided in his resignation letter were “entirely untrue” and accepted that his reason for lying was that he did not want Mr Hilbeck to find out about his plans to start a new recruitment company in the same sector.

Mr Hilbeck sets out at para 21 of his witness statement details of further information emailed by Mr Ludley from his Claimant email account to his personal email account, which includes information about individuals being put forward for roles within clients, and the Claimant’s subscriptions to two very large recruitment websites, Indeed and Totaljobs (the latter including the Claimant’s Recruitment Contract Agreement) on 9 June 2021. I do not understand Mr Ludley to deny that he did so.

Both the day before and the day after Mr Ludley’s employment terminated, on 21 June 2021 and again on 23 June 2021, the Claimant’s financial manager emailed him asking for the return of all devices, systems and website logins that he had used whilst working for the Claimant. It is Mr Hilbeck’s evidence, which I accept, that he failed to do so. Mr Hilbeck says that because both Mr Chapman and Mr Ludley had left, the Claimant went into a period of being unable to trade until new hires were made. I am satisfied that Mr Ludley was well aware of that, and that provides the context of what happened next.

Mr Ludley accepted that he emailed from his Greenscape email address three people at the Claimant’s then largest client, Idverde, on 22 June 2021 about recruitment for various roles, using information from the Claimant’s Client List. There is no suggestion in those email that he was working for a new company. One of those roles was a named individual who had already been placed by the Claimant and was due to start at Idverde on 30 June 2021.

On 24 June 2021 Mr Ludley also communicated from his Greenscape email account with another key client of the Claimant called Scotscape, without stating that he was no longer employed by the Claimant.

On 27 June 2021 Mr Ludley sent the 27 June E-mail which he has pleaded as “an idiotic moment of madness for which he apologises”. I do not accept this characterisation as it seems to have been the culmination of a careful plan, the execution of which began at least 5 weeks earlier with the transfer of the Claimant Spreadsheets and Claimant Client List, and which continued with the transfer in early June of various other information from the Claimant and then the email communication with the Claimant’s contacts from his new Greenscape email address.

Both Mr Hilbeck and Mr Chapman estimate that there were around 500 names and email addresses in the Claimant’s Client List at the time the 27 June Email was sent, and that the MailChimp ‘campaign’ folder exported by Mr Ludley contained all the email addresses stored on the Claimant’s customer relationship management system maintained by Mr Chapman until he left, although they did not know this until MailChimp confirmed what had been exported, which was not until October 2021. I accept that evidence.

Mr Ludley’s evidence is that his 27 June Email “evinced no responses”, which he said was not surprising, “because recruitment mass mailings are generally an ineffective though not hopeless marketing tool.” I have already set out my concerns with his evidence on this point.

The Claimant became aware of the 27 June Email almost immediately as the Claimant’s Client List included the Claimant’s HR administrator, who received it and immediately forwarded it to Mr Hilbeck.