Proform Sports Management Ltd v Proactive Sports Management Ltd & Anor

A third party is not liable in tort for procuring a breach of a contract which is voidable by the contracting minor. The possibility that the contract remains valid until avoided does not alter that conclusion. A minor’s management or agency agreement is not binding merely because it may be beneficial. It must fall within the recognised category of contracts for necessaries or contracts analogous to apprenticeship, education or service. A player-representation agreement which neither provides training nor enables the minor to earn a living may fall outside that category. Summary judgment is appropriate where the claim has no real prospect of success, but disputed issues of intention and causation ordinarily require trial.

Proform claimed damages from Proactive and Mr Paul Stretford for allegedly inducing Wayne Rooney to breach a two-year management and agency agreement entered into when he was a minor. The defendants sought summary judgment under CPR 24.2, contending that the agreement was voidable, that no tort could arise from procuring its breach, and that the claim also failed on intention and causation.

The court considered whether the agreement was analogous to a contract for necessaries, apprenticeship, education or service, and whether the disputed factual issues could properly be determined summarily.

1. Summary judgment. The defendants’ application was granted. The claimant had no reasonable prospect of establishing at trial that the agreement was a contract for necessaries or analogous to a contract of apprenticeship, education or service.
2. Contracts with minors. The recognised exception to the general rule that a minor’s contract is voidable does not extend to every contract which is beneficial. The agreement must fall within a particular recognised category. A player-representation agreement was materially different from agreements which provide training, instruction, employment or the means by which a minor can begin to earn a living. Rooney was already engaged with Everton and the agreement imposed no obligation on Proform to provide training or instruction.
3. Inducing breach of a voidable contract. The court accepted the reasoning in Greig v Insole [1978] 1 WLR 302, and considered it logically applicable where the person induced enjoys the right to rescind. There could be no liability for procuring breach of a contract which the minor was entitled to avoid, whether or not the contract had already been avoided.
4. Other grounds. Legal advice was not treated as sufficient, on the evidence, to justify summary judgment on intention. Causation also involved disputed factual matters, including whether the defendants had influenced the Rooney family before the expiry of the Proform agreement. Those issues would have required a trial.
5. The question whether the agreement was beneficial to Rooney did not need to be decided.