Daniel Northall KC successfully represented Hattons of London in a business protection case against several of its former employees in the High Court.
Bruce Carr KC (sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court) handed down judgment in Hattons of London Ltd v The Knightsbridge Collection Ltd v ors [2026] EWHC 1510 (KB) on Friday 19 June 2026 after a five-day trial in February.
In many respects, this was classic business protection litigation. However, the case was quite extraordinary in respect of the obduracy with which the Defendants pursued their strategy of denial in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Daniel ensured that this strategy did not pay off; repeatedly exposing the Defendants’ falsehoods in cross-examination. This led the Deputy Judge to conclude (at paragraph 100 of his Judgment) that the Defendants “dug themselves into a hole” and “doggedly refused to move, save to the extent of digging further into that hole”.
Summary
Hattons of London is a specialist seller of rare and exclusive coins, operating in a niche market of individual collectors. Many of Hattons’s customers are repeat clients whose accounts are served by its employee Account Managers.
Between February and March 2025, several of Hattons’s Account Managers (the Individual Defendants) took sick leave.
From 1 May 2025, Hattons received reports of competition indicating use of its confidential information by a company trading as The Knightsbridge Collection (the First Defendant). Hattons obtained evidence that various of the ‘sick’ Account Managers were involved in working for Knightsbridge and had accessed its customer database whilst on sick leave. The Individual Defendants all resigned from Hattons by July 2025, having submitted a sham collective grievance on 30 April 2025.
Hattons, represented by Daniel Northall KC, obtained an interim injunction against Knightsbridge and the Individual Defendants in July 2025. Afterwards, Knightsbridge was placed into voluntary liquidation and was wound up on 11 August 2025.
At trial, the Claimant benefited from overwhelming evidence obtained from Zoho, Knightsbridge’s software platform, via a s.234 Insolvency Act 1986 application. The most damning document was Knightsbridge’s sales record which showed that 172 out of 176 of Knightsbridge’s entire sales were to Hattons’s customers (the remaining 4 were to relatives of the Individual Defendants).
Defence
Although each of the Defendants’ explanations varied, collectively their defence included the following arguments: that the work they did at Knightsbridge was not ‘work’ but informal assistance for a friend (the Eighth Defendant); that the purpose of their presence at Knightsbridge’s premises was not to work but to organise their collective grievance; that access to Hattons’s database was to use material for the grievance; and that the sales made by Knightsbridge were by use of legitimately purchased data. The Deputy Judge rejected each and every argument as implausible.
Judgment
The Judgment is striking for its factual findings against the Defendants. The Deputy Judge said at para 97: “I am completely satisfied that each and every one of the Defendants in this case has behaved in a dishonest and reprehensible way… The evidence against them is, in short, overwhelming.”
The Deputy Judge made the following findings of liability:
- The Individual Defendants breached their duties of confidence to the Claimant;
- The Individual Defendants breached express and implied terms of confidentiality in their employment contracts and the NDAs which each signed as a requirement of their employment;
- The Individual Defendants were each liable for unlawful means conspiracy;
- The Individual Defendants were each liable for breaches of the Copyright and Rights Databases Regulations 1997.
The Deputy Judge awarded an 18-month springboard injunction against the Individual Defendants, providing a total of two and a half years’ protection from the date of the last alleged breach.
Key Takeaways
Section 234 Insolvency Act 1986: A Powerful Resource
When the Claim Form and Particulars were filed, the Claimant’s evidence was strong but not necessarily conclusive. The Claimant suspected that the data contained in Knightsbridge’s Zoho account might considerably enhance its position, yet Zoho was unwilling to provide this information either to the Liquidators or the Claimant without a court order.
The Claimant encouraged the Liquidators to use their powers under section 234 to make an application against Zoho as a controller of the company’s property. This turned out to be a pivotal move which led to the disclosure of 4,300 documents, tipping the balance of the case overwhelmingly in the Claimant’s favour. Section 234 is a powerful resource in situations where a liquidated company’s data is held by a third party.
Marshalling Evidence
As well as making considerable efforts to cover their tracks, the Defendants were dogmatic in their denials of the allegations against them. The conduct of the case by Hattons’s solicitors, Herrington Carmichael, and Daniel Northall KC provides a valuable lesson in the virtue of perseverance when accumulating and interrogating evidence on behalf of a claimant. Daniel ensured that the Deputy Judge’s conclusion at para 71 – that “the positions and defences adopted by the Defendants are simply untrue” – was inevitable.
This was a resounding win for Hattons, Herrington Carmichael and Daniel Northall KC.
Written by Oliver Bacon
22 June 2026
Please see link to publicly accessible National Archive of this case.
