"It is clear that the procurement of the violation of a right is a cause of action in all instances where the violation is an actionable wrong, as in violations of a right to property, whether real or personal, or to personal security: he who procures the wrong is a joint wrongdoer, and may be sued, either alone or jointly with the agent, in the appropriate action for the wrong complained of."
"It was undoubtedly prima facie an unlawful act on the part of Miss Wagner to break her contract, and therefore a tortious act of the defendant maliciously to procure her to do so…"
"the respondent's action [in calling a strike] made it practically impossible for the appellants to do any new business with the barge hirers. It was not disputed that such interference with business is tortious if any unlawful means are employed."
"He who wilfully induces another to do an unlawful act which, but for his persuasion, would or might never have been committed, is rightly held to be responsible for the wrong he has procured."
"[W]here the act itself to which the loss is traceable involves some breach of contract or some breach of duty, and amounts to an interference with legal rights…the immediate agent is liable, and it may well be that the person in the background who pulls the strings is liable too, though it is not necessary in the present case to express any opinion on that point."
"In all of them the act complained of was in its nature wrongful; violence, menaces of violence, false statements."
"I have no hesitation in saying that I think the decision was right, not on the ground of malicious intention - that was not, I think, the gist of the action - but on the ground that a violation of a legal right committed knowingly is a cause of action, and that it is a violation of legal right to interfere with contractual relations recognised by law if there be no sufficient justification for the interference."
"If the above reasoning is correct, Lumley v. Gye was rightly decided, as I am of opinion it clearly was. Further, the principle involved in it cannot be confined to inducements to break contracts of service, or indeed to inducements to break any contracts. The principle which underlies the decision reaches all wrongful acts done intentionally to damage a particular individual and actually damaging him."
"No man, whether trader or not, can, however, justify damaging another in his commercial business by fraud or misrepresentation. Intimidation, obstruction, and molestation are forbidden; so is the intentional procurement of a violation of individual rights, contractual or other, assuming always that there is no just cause for it. The intentional driving away of customers by shew of violence: Tarleton v. M'Gawley 1 Peake NPC 270; the obstruction of actors on the stage by preconcerted hissing: Clifford v. Brandon 2 Camp 358; Gregory v. Brunswick 6 Man & G 205; the disturbance of wild fowl in decoys by the firing of guns: Carrington v. Taylor 1 East 571, and Keeble v. Hickeringill 11 East 574n; the impeding or threatening servants or workmen: Garret v. Taylor Cro Jac 567; the inducing persons under personal contracts to break their contracts: Bowen v. Hall 6 QBD 333; Lumley v. Gye 2 E & B 216; all are instances of such forbidden acts."
"In [my] opinion the defendants…knowingly committed a violation of the ARM company's legal rights by interfering, without any justification whatever, with the contractual relations existing between them and the GWK company and [I think] that the defendants so interfered with the intention of damaging the ARM company and that the company [has] been thereby damnified."
"First…there may…be an actionable interference with contractual rights where other means of interference than persuasion or procurement or inducement, in the sense of influence of one kind or another brought to bear on the mind of the contract breaker to cause him to break his contract, are used by the interferer; but, secondly, that (apart from conspiracy to injure, which, as I have said, is not in question so far as this motion is concerned) acts of a third party lawful in themselves do not constitute an actionable interference with contractual rights merely because they bring about a breach of contract, even if they were done with the object and intention of bringing about such breach."
"It was suggested in the course of argument by Sir Frank Soskice and by Mr. Lindner, that the tort must still be properly confined to such direct intervention, that is, to cases where the intervener or persuader uses by personal intervention persuasion on the mind of one of the parties to the contract so as to procure that party to break it. I am unable to agree that any such limitation is logical, rational or part of our law. In such cases where the intervener (if I may call him such) does so directly act upon the mind of a party to the contract as to cause him to break it, the result is, for practical purposes, as though in substance he, the intervener, is breaking the contract, although he in not a party to it…At any rate, it is clear that, when there is such a direct intervention by the intervener, the intervention itself is thereby considered wrongful. I cannot think that the result is any different if the intervener, instead of so acting upon the mind of the contracting party himself, by some other act, tortious in itself, prevents the contracting party from performing the bargain. A simple case is where the intervener, for example, physically detains the contracting party so that the contracting party is rendered unable by the detention to perform the contract."
"a person's liberty or right to deal with others is nugatory, unless they are at liberty to deal with him if they choose to do so. Any interference with their liberty to deal with him affects him. If such interference is justifiable in point of law, he has no redress. Again, if such interference is wrongful, the only person who can sue in respect of it is, as a rule, the person immediately affected by it; another who suffers by it has usually no redress; the damage to him is too remote, and it would be obviously practically impossible and highly inconvenient to give legal redress to all who suffer from such wrongs. But if the interference is wrongful and is intended to damage a third person, and he is damaged in fact - in other words, if he is wrongfully and intentionally struck at through others, and is thereby damnified - the whole aspect of the case is changed: the wrong done to others reaches him, his rights are infringed although indirectly, and damage to him is not remote or unforeseen, but is the direct consequence of what has been done."
"merely potentially reduces the profits which [the plaintiffs] make as the result of the performance by Mr Presley's executors of their contractual obligations."
"It is true that the exploitation of the licence may not have been so successful commercially by reason of the infringement, but the contractual relations and their performance remain completely unaffected."
"the right to sue under intellectual property rights created and governed by statute [is] inherently governed by the statute concerned. Parliament in various intellectual property statutes has, in some cases, created a right to sue and in others not. In the case of the 1988 Act it expressly re-conferred the right on a copyright exclusive licensee, conferred the right on an exclusive licensee under the new form of property called an unregistered design right (see section 234) but did not create an independent right to sue on a registered design exclusive licensee. It is not for the courts to invent that which Parliament did not create."
"Albeit that he may have no desire to bring about that consequence in order to achieve what he regards as his ultimate ends, from the point of view of the plaintiff, whatever the motive of the defendant, the damage which he suffers will be the same."
"The acts of an individual as administrator, administrative receiver, liquidator or provisional liquidator of a company are valid notwithstanding any defect in his appointment, nomination or qualifications."
"There is, as it appears to me, a vital distinction between ( a. ) an appointment in which there is a defect or, in other words, a defective appointment, and ( b. ) no appointment at all. In the first case it is implied that some act is done which purports to be an appointment but is by reason of some defect inadequate for the purpose; in the second case there is not a defect, there is no act at all. The section does not say that the acts of a person acting as director shall be valid notwithstanding that it is afterwards discovered that he was not appointed a director. Even if it did, it might well be contended that at least a purported appointment was postulated. But it does not do so, and it would, I think, be doing violence to plain language to construe the section as covering a case in which there has been no genuine attempt to appoint at all. These observations apply equally where the term of office of a director has expired, but he nevertheless continues to act as a director, and where the office has been from the outset usurped without the colour of authority."
"the liability under it is founded upon what has been regarded as a salutary rule for the protection of property, namely, that persons deal with the property in chattels or exercise acts of ownership over them at their peril."
"If, as is quite possible, the changes in the course of business since the principles of law were established make them cause great hardships or inconvenience, it is the province of the Legislature to alter the law."
"There is no privity between the parties to this suit. The plaintiff's claim is on the bankers, and they must seek their remedy against the defendant the best way they can."
"The defendant bank was the holder of the cheques…and …collected the proceeds in its own right… Therefore the defendant bank converted the cheques. That the damages for such conversion are (at any rate where the drawer has sufficient funds to his credit and the drawee bank is solvent) the face value of the cheques is established in a series of cases: … so well established that it is not necessary to inquire into the principle which may underlie the authority. But the principle probably is that, though the plaintiff might at any moment destroy the cheques while they remained in his possession, they are potential instruments whereby the sums which they represent may be drawn from his bankers, and, if they get into other hands than his, he will be the loser to the extent of the sums which they represent. It may also be that anyone who has obtained its value by presenting a cheque is estopped from asserting that it has only a nominal value."
"Conversion primarily is conversion of chattels, and the relation of bank to customer is that of debtor and creditor. As no specific coins in a bank are the property of any specific customer there might appear to be some difficulty in holding that a bank, which paid part of what it owed its customer to some other person not authorised to receive it, had converted its customer's chattels; but a series of decisions binding on this Court, culminating in Morison's case and Underwood's case [[1924] 1 KB 775 ] have surmounted the difficulty by treating the conversion as of the chattel, the piece of paper, the cheque under which the money was collected, and the value of the chattel converted as the money received under it: see the explanation of Phillimore LJ in Morison's case [cited above]"
"First, the information itself…must 'have the necessary quality of confidence about it. Secondly, that information must have been imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence. Thirdly, there must be an unauthorised use of that information to the detriment of the party communicating it."
"the very facts that Hello! and OK! competed for exclusivity as they did and that each was ready to pay so much for it points to the commercial confidentiality of coverage of the event. The event was private in character and the elaborate steps to exclude the uninvited, to include only the invited, to preclude unauthorized photography, to control the authorized photography and to have had the claimants' intentions in that regard made clear all conduce to that conclusion. Such images as were, so to speak, radiated by the event were imparted to those present, including Mr Thorpe and his camera, in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence. Everyone there knew that was so."
"198. As for the Hello! defendants, their consciences were, in my view, tainted; they were not acting in good faith nor by way of fair dealing. Whilst their position might have been worse had I held that the taking of unauthorised pictures for use by them had been truly commissioned in advance, even without that there is in my view enough to afflict their conscience. They knew that OK! had an exclusive contract; as persons long engaged in the relevant trade, they knew what sort of provisions any such contract would include and that it would include provisions intended to preclude intrusion and unauthorised photography. Particularly would that be so where, as they knew, a very considerable sum would have had to have been paid for the exclusive rights which had been obtained. … The surrounding facts were such that a duty of confidence should be inferred from them. The Hello! defendants had indicated to paparazzi in advance that they would pay well for photographs and they knew the reputation of the paparazzi for being able to intrude. The unauthorised pictures themselves plainly indicated they were taken surreptitiously. Yet these defendants firmly kept their eyes shut lest they might see what they undeniably knew would have become apparent to them."
"I want to state categorically that there was never an intention to cause damage to any of the claimants…because we have always treated them in Hello! with deference and sympathy, in accordance with the magazine style. In our 60-year history we have never tried to damage anyone. Therefore, we would not want to do it to people whom we have always treated fairly and objectively in our reports portraying them in the best possible light. With respect to OK! we took it for granted that, without a doubt, they would have a great editorial success, as they had a great exclusive and consequently, the magazine would be sold under excellent conditions as was the case. Our main purpose was to inform our readers about an event which had been publicised all over the media for weeks before the wedding, which shows that this wedding was of interest for the United Kingdom. We did not wish to disappoint our readers. It was never our aim or intention to damage the third claimant, our prime motivation was only to give our readers information on the wedding of two celebrities, about whom, without doubt, our readers expected to read in Hello!..."
"Senor Sanchez Junco disavowed having acted in revenge against the Douglases for his not getting the exclusive he so wished; rather he wanted, despite losing the exclusive, to publish an edition that would interest his readers, the event being one which had captured the imagination of the public. His act, he said, was not of revenge but of salvage. He denied having the intention of spoiling OK!'s sales adding … 'my motive was never to spoil the exclusive of OK!. I repeat, I wanted to defend as far as I could my publication … My priority was to save my publication after having, in the light of a very important big loss, and that is that of the exclusive, and I didn't think of the possible damage that I could inflict on Hello! or the Douglases…'"
"I…accept the evidence [Senor Sanchez Junco gave on this subject.] Whilst I recognise that for a defendant to act out of self-interest does not, of itself, disprove that he had no intent to injure another, here I find on the evidence that there was no intent to injure by unlawful means because there was no intent to injure at all."
"How any definite line is to be drawn between acts, whose real purpose is to advance the defendants' interests, and acts, whose real purpose is to injure the plaintiff in his trade, is a thing which I feel at present beyond my power. When the whole object of the defendants' action is to capture the plaintiff's business, their gain must be his loss. How stands the matter then? The difference disappears."
'What, then, are the limitations which the law imposes on a trader in the conduct of his business as between himself and other traders? There seem to be no burdens or restrictions in law upon a trader which arise merely from the fact that he is a trader, and which are not equally laid on all other subjects of the Crown. His right to trade freely is a right which the law recognises and encourages, but it is one which places him at no special disadvantage as compared with others. No man, whether trader or not, can, however, justify damaging another in his commercial business by fraud or misrepresentation. Intimidation, obstruction, and molestation are forbidden; so is the intentional procurement of a violation of individual rights, contractual or other, assuming always that there is no just cause for it. … But the defendants have been guilty of none of these acts. They have done nothing more against the plaintiffs than pursue to the bitter end a war of competition waged in the interest of their own trade. To the argument that a competition so pursued ceases to have a just cause or excuse when there is ill-will or a personal intention to harm, it is sufficient to reply … that there was here no personal intention to do any other or greater harm to the plaintiffs than such as was necessarily involved in the desire to attract to the defendants' ships the entire tea freights of the ports, a portion of which would otherwise have fallen to the plaintiffs' share.'
'It cannot be said that every form of coercion is wrong. A dividing line must be drawn and the natural line runs between what is lawful and unlawful as against the party threatened.'
'When the whole object of the defendants' action is to capture the plaintiff's business, their gain must be his loss. How stands the matter then? The difference disappears. The defendant's success is the plaintiff's extinction, and they cannot seek the one without ensuing the other.'
'It is clear that the procurement of the violation of a right is a cause of action in all instances where the violation is an actionable wrong, as in violations of a right to property, whether real or personal, or to personal security: he who procures the wrong is a joint wrongdoer , and may be sued, either alone or jointly with the agent, in the appropriate action for the wrong complained of.'
'It was undoubtedly prima facie an unlawful act on the part of Miss Wagner to break her contract, and therefore a tortious act of the defendant [knowingly] to procure her to do so .'
'These statements embody an intelligible and a salutary principle, and they contain a full explanation of the law upon which the case [ Lumley v Gye ] was decided. He who wilfully induces another to do an unlawful act which, but for his persuasion, would or might never have been committed, is rightly held responsible for the wrong which he procured.'
'interfering with contractual relations'
'… on the ground that a violation of legal right committed knowingly is a cause of action, and that it is a violation of legal right to interfere with contractual relations recognised by law if there be no sufficient justification for the interference.'
'Forms of action are dead, but their ghosts still haunt the precincts of the law. In their life they were powers of evil, and even in death they have not wholly ceased from troubling. In earlier days they filled the law with formalism and fiction, confusion and complexity, and though most of the mischief which they did has been buried with them, some portion of it remains inherent in the law of the present day. Thus if we open a book on the law of torts, howsoever modern and rationalized, we can still hear the echoes of the old controversies … and we are still called upon to observe distinctions and subtleties that have no substance or justification in them, but are nothing more than an evil inheritance from the days when forms of action and of pleading held the legal system in their clutches. In no branch of the law is this more obvious than in that which relates to the different classes of wrongs which may be committed with respect to chattels. In particular the law of trover and conversion is a region still darkened with the mists of legal formalism, through which no man will find his way by the light of nature …'
"It cannot be said that the confidence runs with the letters."
"It is a recognised duty of every man, and more especially of a successful man in any profession, to make his life and experience useful to others, and it would be inconsistent with this to hold that a writer of letters must be presumed to have intended that those letters should not be used at some time or other, on a proper occasion and in a proper manner, towards that end."
"Perhaps the most sterile of the debates which have arisen around the subject of information received in confidence is whether or not such information should be classified as property."
"If we are wrong in our conclusions that OK! had no right of commercial confidence in the information portrayed by Hello!'s photographs, this can only be on the basis that the photographs published by Hello! fell within the generic class of commercially confidential information to which OK! were party and which OK! were entitled to protect."
"So far as privacy is concerned, the case of the first and second claimants is not a particularly strong one. They did not choose to have a private wedding, attended by a few members of their families and a few friends, in the normal sense of the words 'private wedding'. There is nothing in the Court's papers to belie the suggestion at p88 of the disputed issue 639 of 'Hello!' that they invited 250 guests, and the trappings of privacy in this context are identical with the trappings of confidentiality to which I have alluded earlier in this judgment."
"In the present case, it is of considerable relevance that very widespread publicity was to be given in any event to the wedding very soon afterwards by way of photographs in 'OK!' magazine. The occasion thereby lost much of its private nature. The claimants were by their security measures and by their agreements with the service companies seeking not so much to protect the privacy of the first two claimants but rather to control the form of publicity which ensued."
". . . that the claimants had here a valuable trade asset, a commodity the value of which depended, in part at least, upon its content at first being kept secret and then of its being made public in ways controlled by Miss Zeta-Jones and Mr Douglas for the benefit of them and of the third claimant. I quite see that such an approach may lead to a distinction between the circumstances in which equity affords protection to those who seek to manage their publicity as part of their trade or profession and whose private life is a valuable commodity and those whose is not but I am untroubled by that; the law which protects individual confidences and a law of privacy may protect the latter class and provide no reason to diminish protection for the former. So far as concerns OK!, the right to exclusivity of photographic coverage of the wedding was, in contrast with the nature of the confidence as to the first and second claimants, even more plainly a right in the nature of a trade secret. I thus regard photographic representation of the wedding reception as having had the quality of confidence about it. Of course, the general appearance of both Mr Douglas and Miss Zeta-Jones was no secret; what they looked like was well known to the public. But that does not deny the quality of commercial confidentiality to what they looked like on the exceptional occasion of their wedding."
"On analysis, OK!'s complaint is not that Hello! published images which they had been given the exclusive right to publish, but that Hello! published other images, which no one with knowledge of their confidentiality had any right to publish. The claimants themselves argued that 'the unauthorised photographs were taken at different moments to the authorised ones, showed different and informal incidents at the reception, and were naturally much less posed.' These photographs invaded the area of privacy which the Douglases had chosen to retain. It was the Douglases, not OK!, who had the right to protect this area of privacy or confidentiality. Clause 10 of the OK! contract expressly provided that any rights not expressly granted to OK! were retained by the Douglases."
"Both Michael and I are in the business of 'name and likeness.' Any photographs of us that are published are important to us, not just personally but professionally as well. People go to see movies specifically because either Michael or I are in them and they have expectations, among other things, of the way we will look. Those expectations are created to a significant degree by the images they see of us in the media. Directors take into account the public's perception of actors and actresses when casting for films. The hard reality of the film industry is that preserving my image, particularly as a woman, is vital to my career."
"I find difficulty in attaching any precise meaning to the phrase 'property in a spectacle.' A 'spectacle' cannot be 'owned' in any ordinary sense of that word. Even if there were any legal principle which prevented one person from gaining an advantage for himself or causing damage to another by describing a spectacle produced by that other person, the rights of the latter person could be described as property only in an metaphorical sense. Any appropriateness in the metaphor would depend upon the existence of the legal principle. The principle cannot itself be based upon such a metaphor."
". . . that Robert de Niro's appearance, mainly as 'the creature' but also as 'the sharp featured man' should be kept secret so as to maintain the interest of the public in one of the essential elements of the film, namely, the appearance of Dr Frankenstein's creation."
"There is really no difference in any important respect between [a share of stock] and other kinds of personal property. A man purchases a share of stock and pays one hundred dollars for it. He afterwards purchases a horse, and pays the same price. The one was bought in the market as readily as the other and can be sold and delivered as readily. The one can be pledged as collateral security as easily as the other; as easily attached to secure a debt; and its value as easily estimated. The one enriches a man as much as the other, and fills as important a place in the inventory of his estate."
"It is at present the prevailing view that there can be no conversion of an ordinary debt not represented by a document, or of such intangible rights as the goodwill of a business or the names of customers. The process of extension has not, however, necessarily terminated; and nothing that is said in this Section is intended to indicate that in a proper case liability for intentional interference with some other kind of intangible rights may not be found."
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