KA-2023-MAN-000005 - [2025] EWHC 1593 (KB)

The Claimant worked for about 18 months at one of the Defendant’s pubs. In the course of her employment by the Defendant, she provided contact details. As well as her own contact details, she provided her mother’s mobile phone number, as “Emergency Contact Phone Number”. These details were recorded in her personnel file, which was a paper file kept (with others) in a locked filing cabinet in the manager’s office. The relevant document was conspicuously marked “Strictly Private and Confidential.”

The Claimant stopped working at the pub before Christmas 2018, but the Defendant quite properly retained her details for a period.

During 2018, the Defendant suffered terribly at the hands of her then partner, Ryan Fletcher. He was ultimately arrested in the autumn of 2018. In December 2018, he was on remand for offences against the Claimant. These included offences of serious violence as well as harassment offences which involved (among other things) subjecting her to many unwanted phone calls. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison.

Because of Fletcher’s appalling mistreatment of her, and because she wished to have no further contact with him, the Claimant changed her mobile phone number. She therefore no longer used the number held on file by the Defendant for her. However, her mother’s mobile phone number remained valid.

While on remand, Fletcher got hold of a mobile phone. On Christmas Day 2018, he contacted the pub where the Claimant used to work, pretending to be a police officer. He claimed that he needed to contact the Claimant urgently. He spoke to a member of staff, Kyle Bennett, who had known the Claimant from the period she had worked there. Mr Bennett consulted with the manager, Dawn Brockbank. Ms Brockbank obtained the Claimant’s mother’s number from the Claimant’s personnel file, transcribed it and provided the transcription to Mr Bennett. She instructed Mr Bennett to release the number to the caller. Mr Bennet did so, during a further telephone conversation. All this while, Mr Bennett and Ms Brockbank believed that the caller – Fletcher – was a police officer.

Fletcher then called the Claimant’s mother, who was out having Christmas lunch with her family, including the Claimant. Fletcher again pretended to be a police officer, claimed that he needed to speak to the Claimant urgently and persuaded her mother to pass her mobile phone to the Claimant. He then proceeded to abuse the Claimant and make various threats, before she hung up.

As found by the Recorder, the Claimant was shocked, upset, cried, felt sick and panicked.

It is relevant that, a few months before her employment by the Defendant had ceased, the Claimant had three meetings with another manager, Liza Braddock, in the course of which she referred to the fact that her ex-partner had been abusive, violent and aggressive and that she was frightened about the possibility of contact with him. These were formal meetings which occurred because the Claimant’s anxiety had resulted in her being off work, and a record was therefore made of each of them. On this basis, the Recorder found that the Defendant was aware of the fact that the Claimant had been in an extremely abusive relationship and as a result had suffered physical assault and harassment.

This finding is not one that the Defendant sought to challenge in the appeal before me. However, by Ground 8 of its appeal, the Defendant contended as follows:

“The judge erred in fact and/or his evaluative judgement when imputing knowledge onto the Defendant of the risk that the ex-partner would unlawfully misappropriate the Claimant's next-of-kin details. The Defendant's knowledge was limited to what it had been told whilst the Claimant was an employee. The Claimant stopped working for the Defendant some time prior to the index event. The Claimant confirmed in her oral evidence that she could not have anticipated what happened, let alone the Defendant. The judge imposed a counsel of perfection.”

This is to be directed at the Recorder’s finding in his judgment at [18]:

“My conclusion from the Claimant’s evidence, linked with the above information from the Defendant’s documents, are that the Defendant well knew that the Claimant had been the victim of frightening criminal conduct on the part of Fletcher and that she was worried that he may try and contact her and that this could have serious consequences. They also either knew, or ought reasonably to have known, how important it was (particularly in the context of stalking and violence) that the Claimant’s contact details were kept safe, secure and confidential.”

This is a factual finding, which the Recorder was fully entitled to make, on the basis of the evidence to which he referred. It is indisputably correct that the Defendant knew these matters, from the meetings conducted by Ms Braddock. Mr Waite argued that this was no longer the Defendant’s state of knowledge by late December 2018. I cannot accept this. What had been known by the Defendant in August/September 2018 did not thereafter become unknown. The fact that the Claimant no longer worked at one of the Defendant’s pubs had no bearing on her relationship with Fletcher or her worries that he might try and contact her, with serious consequences; nor did it have any bearing on the knowledge that the Defendant had previously acquired about these matters. I therefore reject Ground 8.

It is also relevant that the Defendant trains its staff in relation to illegal activities such as “pretexting” – which the Defendant’s training manual describes as follows:

“Pretexting is where the perpetrator will impersonate someone else - this could be an authority figure or someone known to you - in order to extract information or money from the victim.”

Someone who has received and absorbed this training should know that the correct course was not to accept the credentials of someone claiming to be an authority figure, without evidence; not to accept claims of urgency; but to refer the matter to head office. None of these precautions was taken on this occasion.

The Recorder found that Mr Bennett and Ms Brockbank were genuinely taken in by Fletcher; and that they intended to help the Claimant, rather than to cause her any harm or distress. However, he also found that they, acting in the course of their employment, failed to act reasonably in all the circumstances: see the judgment at [29]. This finding was challenged by the Defendant in the course of the appeal, in the context of Mr Waite’s submissions under Ground 8, but that challenge was in truth unarguable, on examination of the evidence that I have summarised and for the reasons given by the Recorder in his judgment at [28] and [29].