[2025] UKUT 308 (AAC)

This ground is concerned with the First-tier Tribunal’s finding that the circumstances in which SoSE provided the Slides to the School imported an obligation of confidence. It was not part of the Appellant’s case before the Tribunal that SoSE’s email of 8 November 2021 was incapable of importing an obligation of confidence. It might well be said that this amounted to a concession that the email was capable of importing an obligation of confidence but, even if that is not the case, the Appellant’s Ground 5 arguments can only succeed if they show that the Tribunal misdirected itself in law regarding the circumstances in which the law of confidence recognises the creation of an obligation of confidence.

The Appellant fails to establish that the First-tier Tribunal misdirected itself in law regarding the circumstances in which the law of confidence recognises the creation of an obligation of confidence:

it is argued that the Tribunal failed to take into account the absence of a confidentiality agreement applicable to the Session, which meant that it was not open to SoSE subsequently to impose new conditions. This is simply a variation of earlier arguments that the Session itself destroyed any confidentiality that the Slides might have had;

I cannot understand the argument that the Tribunal’s finding that a duty of confidence was established was undermined by its mistaken belief that the Appellant’s statutory complaint had been dismissed. The link between the two is too elusive and, in any event, the Tribunal clearly did not believe that the Appellant’s statutory complaint had failed;

the Tribunal failed, argues the Appellant, to appreciate that some form of notice is required in order to establish an equitable duty of confidence. However, that was the function performed, on the Tribunal’s analysis, by SoSE’s email of 8 November 2021.