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

Meanwhile, Mr Chapman says that only a few weeks after leaving his employment with the Claimant, he was contacted by Paul Hitchcott who was the Managing Director for PL London, the Claimant’s sister company. Mr Hitchcott told him that Mr Ludley had left and set up Greenscape in direct competition with the Claimant, and told him about the 27 June Email. He offered Mr Chapman to return to the Claimant in the role of Recruitment Manager and Mr Chapman accepted, returning to the Claimant on 4 August 2021. His evidence is that on his return, he quickly understood how detrimental the 27 June Email had been on the Claimant’s business. Mr Hilbeck describes it as taking “a dramatic downturn immediately following the 27 June Email”.

Mr Chapman says Mr Hilbeck asked him to, and he did, send an email to the Claimant’s clients on 13 August 2021 apologising for the 27 June Email and informing them that the Claimant had not changed its name (“August Email”).

Mr Hilbeck explained in cross-examination that the 7 week delay in discovering that Mr Ludley had sent the 27 June Email and Mr Chapman sending out the August Email rebutting it, was due to the Claimant taking legal advice and needing to get a Recruitment Manager in place before going to clients to explain that Mr Ludley’s email was untrue. He did not agree that 7 weeks was a long time to address the issue with customers. Given the fact that the Claimant had been left with no recruitment consultants on Mr Ludley’s departure, and given the fairly swift efforts that were made to get Mr Chapman employed by the Claimant again, and given that at this time the Claimant had no way of knowing how many and which clients the June 27 Email had been sent to because Mr Ludley had destroyed instead of disclosing that evidence, and given that MailChimp did not assist with what Mr Ludley had taken until October 2021, I accept that evidence and am satisfied that the delay was unfortunate but justified.