KB-2023-000257 - [2024] EWHC 647 (KB)

The Maybourne Hotel Group (“the MHG”) is a group of companies of which the ultimate beneficial owners are members of the Al Thani family of Qatar. One of these companies is the first defendant, Maybourne Hotels Ltd (“MHL”), which provides management and corporate services, including human resources services, to other companies in the MHG. Dilmon (UK) Services Ltd (“Dilmon”) also supervises and provides advisory services to companies in the MHG. It is beneficially owned by the family office of His Highness Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who was formerly the Emir of Qatar.

Two new hotels were being constructed on sites owned and/or operated by companies within the MHG: the Maybourne Riviera, near Nice, France (“the Riviera site”), which is owned by Société d'Exploitation et de Détention Hôtelière Vista (“SEDHV”); and the Emory Hotel in London (“the Emory site”), which at the relevant time was owned by Goldrange Properties Ltd (“Goldrange”).

The construction work at these sites was managed by Hume Street Management Consultants Ltd (“HSMC”), an Irish company owned by the property developer Patrick McKillen, of which Mr McKillen and Liam Cunningham were directors. From March 2020, HSMC was also involved in managing three other MHG luxury hotels in London: Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Berkeley.

HSMC engaged Frank Sinton and another individual, Ronnie Delany, as project managers for the Riviera and Emory sites. In the case of the Riviera site, Mr Sinton was engaged through a new French company, SOF Construction SAS (“SOF”), of which Mr Sinton was the director. Mr Sinton worked on the Riviera site from January 2020 and on both the Riviera and the Emory sites from early 2022.

The defendants say that, in early 2022, Marc Socker (a director of MHL and also Head of Real Estate at Dilmon) became aware of allegations that Mr Sinton, Mr Delany and Mr McKillen had acted inappropriately towards staff at the Riviera and Emory sites. MHL’s Board decided to appoint an external human resources specialist to investigate the allegations and, while the investigation was underway, suspended Mr Sinton’s and Mr Delany’s access to the Riviera and Emory sites and other MHG locations.

On 13 April 2022, Mr Socker and his colleagues on the MHL Board sent an email to Mr Cunningham and Annemarie Ryan (Mr McKillen’s secretary), copied to Gianluca Muzzi, a fellow director and co-CEO of MHL. It contained as an attachment a letter on the MHG letterhead addressed to Mr McKillen in these terms:

“Urgent Notice

We are writing to inform you that we (and the relevant owning entities of the relevant hotels) have withdrawn any access rights that Frank Sinton and Ronnie Delany have to Berkeley Hotel, the Emory Hotel site, the Maybourne Rivera and the offices of Maybourne Hotels Limited (the Sites) whilst we look into a number of matters.

We ask that you instruct them not to attend the Sites until further notice. We (and the relevant owning entities) have written to them directly to advise them of the same.”

Similar letters were sent on the letterheads of MHG, Goldrange, SEDHV and the Berkeley Hotel to Messrs Sinton and Delany. On 12-13 April 2022, Mr Socker orally informed MHL’s director of construction, Norman McKibbin (who was responsible for the Emory site) and the office manager at MHL’s head office that Mr Sinton’s access had been suspended. On 13 April 2022, he authorised Mr Bouquay, an employee of Dilmon, to inform the General Manager at the Riviera site that Mr Sinton’s access to that site had been suspended. On 29 April 2022, Mr Socker sent an email to Jawad Sabir, MHL’s Chief Information Officer, to instruct the general managers of Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Berkeley Hotel to disable the building access cards for Mr Sinton (among others).

The investigation was undertaken by Sue Balcombe in May 2022. Ms Balcombe interviewed 25 people, not including Mr Sinton. She issued her confidential report on 1 June 2022, in which she set out evidence of misconduct by Messrs McKillen, Sinton and Delany.

Mr Sinton complains about four publications:

Mr Sinton says that the words in the letter or words to the same effect must have been republished to “various other staff to enable staff to make all the arrangements necessary to enforce and police the ban and to replace [Mr Sinton] and Mr Delany on site”. He pleads, in particular, that Jim Byrne (an independent consultant representing HSMC at the Riviera site), communicated information about Mr Sinton being banned from the site to about 30-40 employees on site, many of them British.

Mr Sinton pleads that the publications were malicious. In her skeleton argument for the present application, Adrienne Page KC for Mr Sinton summarises his case on malice as follows:

“It is the Claimant’s case that this action was taken against him by Ds in bad faith, without a belief in or indifferent to the truth of the defamatory imputations thereby conveyed and/or for the dominant improper motive of advancing the commercial interests of their principals, the Al Thanis. The latter had already embarked upon a number of extreme tactical measures against the party employing the Claimant, [HSMC], with whose owner, [Mr McKillen] and his business partner [Mr Cunningham], the Al Thanis were in very serious financial dispute. McKillen was also barred on 13 April 2022 from entering the same sites, literally days after he had been peremptorily thrown off D1’s board by the Al Thanis.”