JO RICHARDS & ANOR. v LASER SAILBOATS LIMITED & ORS.

A party subject to a court order must comply with it unless it successfully appeals or obtains an order setting it aside or varying it. Compliance is not optional. A party cannot ignore an extant order and reopen, in response to an enforcement application, the arguments which could have been made against making it.

Where an order requires specified information about document-signature dates, a bare inability to recall those dates does not comply if the party neither says that identification is impossible nor explains the enquiries undertaken. The party should provide evidence of efforts to identify the signatories, ascertain the dates, and locate documents or metadata capable of revealing them.

The claimants alleged breaches and termination of licences concerning designs for four sailing-boat models. The first and second defendants relied on assignments of three licences, including assignments said to have taken effect before and after the liquidation of Laserperformance (Europe) Ltd. The dates on which the assignment documents were actually signed were therefore a key issue.

Following an unopposed application for further information, the court ordered the first and second defendants to state the signature date of each relevant assignment document. Their response gave stated effective dates but said they could not recall the precise signature dates and suggested that disclosure might later assist. The claimants applied for a further order. The issues were whether the defendants had breached the earlier order and, if so, what consequential order should be made.

1. The application succeeded in substance. The first and second defendants were in breach of the order of 4 April 2022. That order required the actual dates on which each relevant assignment document was signed. Their response did not provide them.
2. The defendants had not appealed against, or applied to set aside or vary, the earlier order. It therefore remained binding. They could not treat the enforcement application as an opportunity to argue that early disclosure was inappropriate or that the question should await ordinary disclosure.
3. The response did not establish that the dates could not be identified. It merely asserted an inability to recall them and deferred the task of investigation. The relevant documents must have been signed by persons authorised to bind the defendants or their associated company. At a minimum, the defendants should identify the enquiries made of those persons, provide evidence of those enquiries, and explain efforts to locate documents or metadata that might reveal the dates.
4. The court would not make a further order whose terms would make breach almost inevitable on any plausible case advanced by the defendants. Counsel would therefore be heard on the appropriate consequential terms.

This was a first-instance procedural ruling. Earlier interlocutory steps in the same proceedings included an unopposed application for further information and the order of 4 April 2022. No appeal history is stated.