Ukoumunne v The University of Birmingham & Ors

General opinions about historical or academic marginalisation do not ordinarily have the necessary quality of confidence to support a breach of confidence claim. A claimant must identify specific confidential information with sufficient clarity and particularity. Where the pleaded misuse has no realistic prospect of establishing infringement or breach of confidence, a related contractual claim may also be struck out if a trial would have no practical value and the time and cost of proceedings would be disproportionate. The court may make that assessment on the pleaded and assumed facts at the strike-out stage.

The claimant, an academic and former PhD student, alleged that university staff and a publisher had plagiarised material from her draft thesis. Her claims included breach of confidence and breach of contract against the University. An earlier judgment struck out several causes of action and gave her a final opportunity to particularise the remaining claims.

The claimant served further particulars. The first to fourth defendants renewed their application to strike out the remaining claims. The issues were whether the alleged material had the necessary quality of confidence and whether the University had breached a contractual duty by failing properly to investigate her plagiarism complaint.

1. Claim struck out. The remaining claims against the first to fourth defendants were struck out. It followed that all claims against all defendants, including Informa, were struck out. No civil restraint order was made.
2. The claimant’s eleven identified items were expressed at a high level as opinions that the contributions of black British people, black women and ethnic educational movements had been overlooked or marginalised. Such general opinions were not confidential information. The claimant had not identified the underlying research material, as distinct from her opinions, which had allegedly been plagiarised.
3. The supervisor’s encouraging letter, referring to clear new contributions to knowledge, did not identify any of the alleged items as confidential and did not justify a trial on that issue. Nor did the possibility that the defendants had accessed the draft thesis establish that the alleged material possessed the necessary quality of confidence.
4. Although the court assumed, for the purpose of argument, that the University might owe a contractual duty to investigate the complaint under a fair procedure and might have breached it, the claimant had no prospect of proving the underlying copyright infringement, breach of confidence or unauthorised use. The contractual claim therefore could not produce a successful or practically valuable outcome.
5. Proceedings may constitute an abuse of process where the benefit attainable is so limited that it is out of proportion to the time and cost of litigation, applying Jameel v Dow Jones and Co [2005] EWCA Civ 75. A trial was not warranted on the assumptions made.

The court reserved costs for further submissions.

First-instance decision. The judgment records an earlier decision in the same proceedings, [2020] EWHC 184 (IPEC), which had struck out several causes of action and ordered further particulars of the remaining claims.