Saab & Anor v Dangate Consulting Ltd & Ors

An order requiring affidavits to detail disclosures of confidential information requires particularity, not broad summaries. The evidence must enable the receiving party, so far as reasonably possible, to identify the specific information or documents disclosed, the recipients, the dates and the means of disclosure. The court may require disclosure by reference to individual documents or an identified folder, but it should avoid duplicative requirements. A party that considers compliance impossible should apply to vary the order before the compliance deadline. Where serious non-compliance is established, the court may declare breaches, allow further time to purge them and order costs.

The claimants applied for further relief following an earlier order requiring the defendants to deliver up documents and serve sworn affidavits detailing every disclosure of confidential information to third parties. The defendants maintained that they had complied, but their affidavits used broad descriptions such as verbal accounts, extensive disclosure and entire laptop downloads. The court considered whether the affidavits and delivery-up process complied with the earlier order, which further steps were required, and the appropriate time and costs consequences.

1. Application and breaches. The court declared that the defendants had plainly failed to comply with the earlier order in a number of respects. The affidavits did not provide the required level of detail, and documents held by the defendants’ agents were within the scope of the delivery-up obligation.
2. Required particularity. The words “detailing” and “specific” required particularity rather than an outline or summary. The claimants had to be able to understand, as nearly as possible, what information was given, to whom, in what format and when. For documentary disclosures, the information supplied had to enable identification of the individual documents disclosed. This was the test applied by the Court of Appeal in the context of letters of request, including Re Asbestos Insurance Cases [1985] 1 WLR 331 and Tajik Aluminium Plant v Hydro [2005] EWCA Civ 1218; [2006] 1 Lloyd’s Law Rep 155.
3. Limits on compliance. The claimants were not entitled to duplicative information. If disclosure identified each document provided, a further list or description of the information contained in those documents was unnecessary, provided no additional information had been disclosed. The test was not whether the claimants could interrogate the documents, but whether they could obtain a detailed picture of the dissemination of confidential information.
4. Further time and costs. The defendants were given 28 days to comply, rather than the 14 days sought, because of the complexity of the material and the possible consequences of a contempt application. The defendants were ordered to pay the costs of the application, assessed at £72,500.