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

On 30 June 2021 the Claimant sent Mr Ludley a letter of claim seeking, inter alia, undertakings including in relation to the delivery up of the Claimant’s confidential information, followed by deletion of such information that remained in the possession of the Defendants.

On receipt of this letter it is Mr Ludley’s evidence that:

I accept this evidence. Accordingly, there is no evidence before the Court showing to whom he had sent the 27 June E-mail, as that evidence has been destroyed by Mr Ludley.

Mr Ludley responded to the Claimant’s solicitors on 1 July 2021 stating that he needed time to obtain legal advice before providing a substantive response to the letter before action, and although he notably failed to inform them that he was busy deleting evidence on that day and proposed to continue doing so the next, it appears he did also seek legal advice from Bayfields Employment Solicitors. On 6 July 2021 Bayfields responded to the letter before action on his behalf but did not agree to provide the undertakings which the Claimant had sought, and were silent as to the deletion of information by Mr Ludley.

Mr Ludley’s oral evidence is that as soon as he received the Claimant’s solicitor’s letter of 1 July 2021, he realised that his 27 June Email was a mistake and so he was “very careful to explain to clients on the phone that I was nothing to do with the Claimant and that Greenscape was an entirely separate entity. Apart from anything else I need[ed] to ensure that they set up a new supplier account for Greenscape so that any payments would come to my bank”. In his written evidence he said that he “actively promoted” his company as Greenscape and “disassociated both myself and Greenscape from the Claimant”. It was put to him in cross-examination that this was untrue, and he denied it. As he accepted in cross-examination, Mr Ludley provides no documentary or witness evidence from any client to support his assertion that he sought to reassure clients that Greenscape was not the same as Cosmopolitan Recruitment/the Claimant and there is evidence to suggest the opposite. For example, he emailed Scotscape on 6 July 2021 referring to terms “which were fundamentally the same as those we have previously used” in reference to terms used by Scotscape with the Claimant. For those reasons, I am satisfied his evidence on this point is untrue.

Mr Ludley also stated that as he had closed the MailChimp account and erased the database, “I could not send another bulk email correcting my mistake”. He was asked in cross-examination why he did not do so before deleting the MailChimp account, and he had no real answer to give. I do not accept that the 27 June Email was a mistake. I am satisfied it was deliberately phrased and sent to the full Claimant’s Client List in order to divert business from the Claimant, and he did not send a correction because it suited him not to correct that misrepresentation.