“(1) With the knowing assistance and collusion of the 2nd – 12th Defendants, the 1st Defendant is in breach of fiduciary duty to the Claimant and in wilful default of the express terms of an agency agreement between the Claimant and the 1st Defendant dated about December 2006; by reason of providing false and misleading information concerning applications for loan funding. (2) The 1st Defendant (as the remaining Defendants well knew) entered false and/or misleading data into a computerised software accounting programme supplied to it by the Claimant, for the purpose of creating multiple false loan accounts; by fraudulently misrepresenting that applications for finance were being made by genuine customers. (3) In fact the data which the 1st Defendant supplied to the Claimant consisted of multiple variations of the names, addresses and bank accounts of the remaining Defendants; of whom the 6th – 12th Defendants are companies owned or controlled by the 2nd – 4th Defendants, and the 5th Defendant is a close associate of and co-resident with the 4th Defendant. (4) The 1st Defendant is liable to account to the Claimant for its receipt of the Claimant’s money; which constitutes money had and received by the Defendants to the Claimant’s use and dealt with in breach of trust.”
“look Ikki, I know everything is not right in your books, just make sure you bloody have insurance policies backing the umbrellas and start to use more companies to place through the system. This will mean more credit approval and less use of your personal names.”
“[Ms Hartgrove] said that despite her particular instructions Allied Fort needed to continue processing umbrella agreements through the system to prevent a negative build up.”
“If this new project takes off remember me if you need someone to work for u guys I’ll certainly consider it”
“.. given that sequence of correspondence and the complete absence in it of any indication that Creation was aware of type 2 umbrella agreements and given, as I have said, the inherent improbability of Creation continuing to lend money, if it did know about type 2 umbrella agreements, it seems to me that there is a heavy burden on the Represented Defendants to establish that they have a realistic prospect of establishing that Creation did have that knowledge. ”
“That e-mail was sent in response to a threat by Allied Fort to take its business elsewhere. It supports the Represented Defendants’ case only if one interprets “business with us as normal” as referring to type 2s rather then type 1s, but there is nothing in the e-mail itself which indicates that it is referring to type 2s. It could just as easily be referring to type 1s. That e-mail seems to me entirely equivocal.”
“There is always an exercise of judgment to be undertaken by the judge whether the perceived short-cut will turn out to have been beneficial and, inevitably in a proportion of cases expectations will be confounded. Caution is required. But it is simplistic to suppose that in complex litigation the exercise should never be attempted. The volume of documentation and the complexity of the issues raised on the pleadings should be the subject of critical scrutiny and should not without more deter the judge from considering whether it is really necessary to commit the parties and the court to a lengthy trial and all the preparatory steps which that will involve. Indeed it can be submitted with force that those are just the sorts of case which most strongly cry out for the exclusion of anything that is unnecessary for the achievement of a just outcome for the parties.”
“It requires the judge to undertake an exercise of judgment. He must decide whether to exercise the power to decide the case without a trial and give a summary judgment. It is a 'discretionary' power, ie one where the choice whether to exercise the power lies within the jurisdiction of the judge. Secondly, he must carry out the necessary exercise of assessing the prospects of success of the relevant party. If he concludes that there is ‘no real prospect’, he may decide the case accordingly. I stress this aspect because in the course of argument counsel referred to the relevant judgment of Clarke J as if he had made ‘findings’ of fact. He did not do so. Under RSC O.14 as underCPR Part 24 , the judge is making an assessment not conducting a trial or fact-finding exercise. Whilst it must be remembered that the wood is composed of trees some of which may need to be looked at individually, it is the assessment of the whole that is called for. A measure of analysis may be necessary but the 'bottom line' is what ultimately matters.”