Titan Wealth Holdings Limited & Ors v Marian Atinuke Okunola (Order of proceedings)

Where an application for strike out or summary judgment is highly fact-sensitive and substantially overlaps with the issues for trial, the court may defer determining it and hear the evidence and argument together with the trial. This approach may best serve the overriding objective by avoiding duplication, preserving the trial listing, and ensuring that preliminary procedural matters are resolved first. Practical difficulties in the applicant’s materials, including inaccurate bundle references, may also support a rolled-up hearing.

The claimants brought claims for breach of confidence, breach of contract and harassment against a former employee. The defendant applied to strike out the claim or obtain summary judgment in her favour. Collins Rice J had directed that the application be listed at the outset of the three-day trial. The defendant invited the court to determine it before the trial began, but the claimants submitted that all evidence and argument should be heard together. The issue was whether the application should be determined separately before the substantive trial.

1. The application was not determined at the outset of the trial. The court directed that the evidence and arguments on the strike-out and summary-judgment application be rolled up with the substantive evidence and arguments at trial, so that the application and trial issues could be determined together.
2. The defendant’s own application materials showed that determination would require consideration of extensive witness evidence, exhibits, documentation concerning special measures, earlier cross-examination and proposed questions. The application was therefore highly fact-sensitive. Considering the evidence twice would be inconsistent with the overriding objective.
3. The arguments substantially overlapped with the trial issues. They concerned whether conduct amounted to harassment, whether the statutory defence of reasonableness was available, whether information was confidential, and which claimant was owed any duty of confidence. Those matters could not realistically be resolved separately without duplicating the trial.
4. The defendant’s skeleton argument also referred to earlier bundles rather than the current trial bundles, making meaningful use of it difficult and requiring corrected cross-references.
5. Several preliminary matters, including special measures, admission of a further witness statement and a protective injunction for the claimants’ legal representatives, were likely to occupy the first day. It was consequently unrealistic to determine the application before the trial without jeopardising the three-day listing.

The judgment is a first-instance case-management decision. It records that Collins Rice J had ordered on 15 May 2024 that the defendant’s strike-out and summary-judgment application be listed at the outset of the trial.