Flogas Britain v Calor Gas, High Court
A Flogas employee copied customer details from Flogas’s database while he was employed there and gave it to Flogas’s sales director (Hughes), who later worked for Calor. Whilst at Calor, Hughes gave the database to Calor’s head of marketing, Haythornthwaite. She sent a series of mailshots to the Flogas customers to persuade them to switch to Calor. Calor found out, stopped a final mailshot and summarily dismissed Hughes and Haythornthwaite.
However, for the High Court, this was not enough. An infringement of Flogas’s database right had occurred as a substantial part of the Flogas database had been extracted and misused. And although Calor and taken steps to mitigate against the problem, it was vicariously liable for the actions of its employees. They related to business intelligence that was closely linked to the conduct of the business and the connection was so close that it would not be unjust to make Calor vicariously liable. Hughes’s and Haythornthwaite’s handling of the data had been in the ordinary course of the firm’s business or their employment.
The Court awarded damages for the loss of customers from Calor’s mailshot, damages for the income it lost due to having to offer lower prices to retain customers who had received Flogas’s material, costs for lost management time and costs for hiring computer forensics experts. Flogas did not manage to show sufficient evidence to support a claim for lost business that would have been won had there not been market disruption caused by Calor’s mailshot. The total payable by Calor was £250,000.