King's / Queen's Bench Division of the High Court

QB-2021-004022 - [2025] EWHC 1701 (KB)

Fecha: 04-Jul-2025

Bruce Carr KC

Bruce Carr KC :

Introduction

Judgment in this case was handed down on 4 February 2025. My conclusions, in summary, in relation to the claims which the Claimant had brought were as follows:

The Claimant succeeded in his claim against the First Defendant and was entitled to damages in the sum of £236,601.91, subject to any issues of grossing up to take account of any tax liability that he might have on some of the heads of loss on which he had succeeded;

He did not succeed in his claims against the Second or Third Defendants based on their status as directors of the First Defendant;

The First Defendant did not succeed in its set-off defence against the Claimant based on the alleged deliberate destruction of confidential information;

The Claimant was entitled to interest at a rate of 3% per annum.

Given the uncertainty that I had identified in relation to the tax treatment of at least some elements of the award in respect of the Claimant, I invited the parties to provide written submissions on this issue and to attempt to agree the terms of a draft order, with additional submissions to be provided on the terms of that order in the event that agreement could not be reached.

On 8 April 2025, I received written submissions from both counsel, together with their respective drafts of the order that they invited me to make. From the drafts provided, it was apparent that the parties had effectively agreed the tax consequences of the award to the Claimant, with the result that the order should be made in the sum of £275.397.65. As to interest, there was an inconsequential difference of £0.03 in the daily figure. I will proceed on the basis that the daily figure for interest is the calculated by the Claimant, namely £22.64 as this is the figure that I reached through my own calculation.

There is also a fairly inconsequential dispute between the parties as to the recitals that should be included in the final order.

The main area of dispute however related to the issue of costs. Given the distance that the parties were apart on this question, coupled with the fact that the Submissions had been provided on a mutual exchange basis between counsel, I concluded that counsel should each have to opportunity to provide further submissions in response to what had been provided by their opponent. I then received those further submissions from both counsel on 16 May 2025.