Satnam’s agents (DH) had passed on confidential information to the claimant’s business rival (Morbaine). Armed with this information Morbaine acquired a development site which Satnam had wanted to buy.
Held: The court rejected an argument that Morbaine held the site on constructive trust for Satnam. A company purchasing land on strength of unintended and uninvited disclosure of confidential information from a rival for the land did not, simply because of that, hold the land on trust of whatever nature for the owner of the information. Nourse LJ: ‘Clearly, DH and Mr Murray can be regarded as trustees of the information and, clearly, Morbaine can be regarded as having been a knowing recipient of it. However, even assuming, first, that confidential information can be treated as property for this purpose and, secondly, that but for the disclosure of the information Morbaine would not have acquired the Brewery Street site, we find it impossible, in knowing receipt, to hold that there was a sufficient basis for subjecting the Brewery Street site to the constructive trust for which Satnam contends. The information cannot be traced into the site and there is no other sufficient nexus between the two.’
Judges:
Nourse LJ
Citations:
Times 31-Dec-1998, Gazette 13-Jan-1999, Gazette 10-Feb-1999, [1999] 3 All ER 652
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Crown Dilmun, Dilmun Investments Limited v Nicholas Sutton, Fulham River Projects Limited ChD 23-Jan-2004
There was a contract for the sale of Craven Cottage football stadium, conditional upon the grant of non-onerous planning permissions. It was claimed that the contract had been obtained by the defendant employee in breach of his fiduciary duties to . .
Cited – Ultraframe (UK) Ltd v Fielding and others ChD 27-Jul-2005
The parties had engaged in a bitter 95 day trial in which allegations of forgery, theft, false accounting, blackmail and arson. A company owning patents and other rights had become insolvent, and the real concern was the destination and ownership of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property, Equity
Updated: 28 April 2022; Ref: scu.89022
