Self-help!
My attention was drawn today to the recent case of Imerman v Tchenguiz [2009] EWHC 2024 QB, which covers the fraught area of financial disclosure in divorce proceedings. The case is in fact however, a shocking example of the lengths people will go to out of mistrust!
The case concerned a Husband who had been in business with two of the Wife’s brothers. This business relationship had seemingly gone well for a few years and in fact some of the Husband’s businesses were based at premises owned by the brothers and also, importantly, his PC was linked to server space on the brothers’ businesses servers.
When the Husband’s marriage to the brothers’ sister broke down, the brothers then allegedly took it upon themselves to log-in to the Husband’s files (which were password protected, albeit that they knew the password), and they downloaded over various dates a range of documents numbering somewhere between 250,000 - 2.5m pages of documentation when printed! The brothers stated that they had done this owing to concern that the Husband would not properly disclose his wealth in forthcoming proceedings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the Husband then applied to the Court for injuntive relief to prevent onward transmission of the information to any party, including the Wife and her solicitors. This claim was brought in the Queens Bench Division of the High Court rather than the Family Division as that was the appropriate jurisdiction given it was the Wife’s brothers, rather than the Wife, who had taken these actions. In due course the matter came before Eady J when the Husband sought summary judgment on his claim for injunctive relief.
The Brothers ran, it is fair to say, every defence under the sun, however common sense prevailed and a clearly unimpressed Mr Justice Eady found no difficulty in deciding that such wholesale taking of password-protected documents regarding personal finances and even including legally privileged material, was simply not acceptable. The learned Judge ruled that without doubt there could be no defence to the injunctive relief sought debarring the brothers’ from transmitting the information onwards, and it was always open to them to seek preservation Orders to ensure that the information was not destroyed so as to ensure in due course justice was done in the family proceedings.
Family lawyers are well used to the odd bit of ‘accidentally’ opened mail being shown to them, but this was breathtaking in scale. I suspect that, sadly, a very bitter divorce is on the way!