Case No. KB-2025-003035 - [2025] EWHC 2654 (KB)

By a claim form issued under CPR Part 7 on 19 August 2025, the claimant seeks £21,000 in damages together with a final injunction and other relief against each of the defendants. By an application notice issued at the same time, the claimant seeks an interim injunction for the preservation and protection of confidential information and for the enforcement of restrictive covenants following the termination of the first and second defendants’ employment with the claimant. It is not in dispute that after leaving their employment with the claimant, the first and second defendants together established a new business, which is the third defendant in the claim.

The application for an interim injunction was listed urgently on notice. At a hearing held by video link on 26 August 2025, I heard submissions from Mr Daniel Northall KC on behalf of the claimant. Mr Marchant and Mrs Hampton submitted joint written submissions with the assistance of a solicitor. They each appeared before me as litigants in person. Mrs Hampton read out joint oral submissions which were supplemented by Mr Marchant. Owing to a lack of court time, I reserved my decision and reasons until today.

The defendants have been served with a copy of the proposed draft order sought by the claimant and with the bundle of documents on which the claimant relies. Mr Marchant and Mrs Hampton have each filed and served a witness statement with exhibits. These documents have been incorporated into the claimant’s bundle. I have also been provided with copies of detailed undertakings signed by Mr Marchant and Mrs Hampton. The claimant has rejected the undertakings as giving inadequate protection between now and trial. The documents are entitled “contractual undertakings” and are not undertakings to the court.

Both sides contend that the witness evidence of the other side is unreliable and inaccurate. Detailed factual findings will be the task of the trial judge. For present purposes, I shall set out the key facts which are either not in dispute or not realistically in dispute: they derive from undisputed documents or are a matter of common-sense inference.