Carruthers Law

Bailey v Graham [2012] EWCA Civ 1469

December 28, 2012

In the case of Bailey v Graham [2012] EWCA Civ 1469 you will recall that we wrote in June as to the case of Levi Roots otherwise known as Keith Graham. Bailey appealed against the dismissal of the claim.

In that case the court dismissed a claim for breach of confidence and breach of contract because of the lack of documentary evidence which meant that there was no evidence to support any oral agreement between the parties.  The Judge held that there was no evidence that the cookery recipe was sufficiently developed to be capable of or considered to be confidential information.

The Claimant appealed against the decision which had dismissed their claim for damages for breach of contract or breach of confidence.

On appeal the Court refused to allow the application to adduce fresh evidence as it could have been made available at trial.  In any event the court didn’t consider that the report would have brought any important influence on the outcome.

Regarding the Judge’s conclusion on breach of confidence it didn’t depend on the Claimant’s credibility but rather it was the Judge’s conclusion that the recipe was insufficiently certain that was fatal to the claim.

As to the contract claim the Judge had been correct in his approach as to the assessment of the credibility of the parties and the witnesses in the breach of contract claim when he assessed the evidence and the credibility of the parties correctly and had followed the five tests identified by Lord Bingham (“The Judge as juror” the judicial determination of factual issues).

He had not rejected any evidence without good reason and there was no issue on which all the evidence pointed one way.  The Judge found that proper consideration of the whole of his judgement demonstrated clearly that he had surveyed all relevant evidence on each point before reaching his conclusion.