KB-2025-002427 - [2025] EWHC 1993 (KB)

The Defendants’ responses and evidence

In the pre-action response, the individual Defendants said that they were at D1’s offices as it was a convenient place to meet to discuss their collective grievance against the Claimant. They all offered undertakings in broadly similar terms relating to basic misuse and preservation obligations. They also included an undertaking that they would not be “engaged or employed” by D1 for a period of 1 month.

The Claimant did not accept these undertakings as being sufficient, noting additionally that the Defendants had not offered an undertaking to the effect that they had not been previously engaged or employed by D1.

D1 stated that it had been trading since October 2024 using “approximately 25,000 customer records that were purchased from Chik Digital on 7 April 2025, Direct Data on 23 May 2025 and Latch Media on 11 June 2025, from recommendations and introductions from people and from meeting customers at numerous coin fairs and data lists obtained at coin fairs”. It denied that it had knowingly had access to the Claimant’s clients’ contact details but stated that it might have innocently received details through the customer data that it had purchased.

D4 and D5 each filed witness statements for the purposes of the hearing before me.

In his first witness statement, D4 admits that he attended the offices of D1 on occasions in May 2025. He says that he did so because he was contemplating joining the collective grievance claim. He denies sharing any confidential information during that time and having any discussions relating to D1. He also admits giving his login details to some of the other defendants, but he says that this was because he wanted to help them prepare for their grievance claim.

D4 says that after he had been suspended, he accessed his work laptop on 2 June 2025 using a hotspot at the D1 offices. He says that he did this because he wanted to check to see whether his customer accounts had been moved over to the Claimant’s sales manager’s son. D4 says that he spent 5 or 6 days at D1’s offices because he wanted to explore working for D1. D4 goes on to admit that “[s]ometime in June 2025, I logged on to my personal laptop at the same time as my Hattons' work laptop and I manually inputted into an Excel spreadsheet on my personal laptop around 70 customer details from my Hattons' issued work laptop. These included the customer's name, phone number, date of birth if there was one, email address if they had one, and home address. I did this because I was contemplating working for Knightsbridge when I had left the employment of Hattons but I was not thinking clearly or rationally at the time. However, after a couple of days, I heard on the grapevine that Hattons had become aware of Knightsbridge. This made me realise that inputting the details onto my personal laptop had been the wrong thing to do and so I asked one of my friends (not a co-defendant) to wipe my personal laptop.”

In his second statement, D4 exhibits the appeal against the dismissal of the grievance which has been lodged on behalf of him as well as D2, D3, D5, D6, D7 and two current employees of the Claimant. He also exhibits an email from D8 to D6 in which an insolvency practitioner states that she has been recently instructed in relation to the liquidation of D1.

In his first witness statement, D5 sets out the background to his grievance claim and the difficulties that he had with the Head of Sales. He admits that he accessed the Customer Base Report as well as the Agent Only base report from around “March 2023” (which I take to be a mistaken reference to March 2025). He says that his access had been blocked and so he used D3’s login details. He says that he did this as he was considering raising a grievance. He responds in detail to the IT report relied upon by the Claimant. He says that his wife used his work laptop, and it was his wife who downloaded Zoom and that she had deleted the internet browsing history before it was returned to the Claimant. He says that “The agent only base report may have downloaded whilst I was trying to refine the filters on the system. I have never denied accessing the report”.

D5 says that he considers that the Claimant’s application in respect of a requirement to serve an Affidavit and for an imaging order were neither necessary nor proportionate. He says any restriction on his employment would have a “crippling effect” on his family as he is the sole breadwinner.

In his second statement D5 exhibits his appeal against the outcome of the grievance. He says that the investigation was conducted poorly, and he has serious concerns as to the Claimant’s true motive underlying these proceedings which appear to be a counterattack for raising the grievance.