Trailfinders Ltd v Travel Counsellors Ltd & Ors

This dispute came out of a familiar commercial problem: staff leaving with customer relationships and joining a competitor. Trailfinders said former sales consultants took customer names, contact details and booking information when they moved into the Travel Counsellors network. It also said some of them continued to access Trailfinders’ systems after leaving.

The court focused on two former consultants. One had created a personal contact book while still employed. Both had post-employment dealings with Trailfinders’ Viewtrail system. The new business, TCL, had also received customer details from them and used those details in its own operation. That made the case useful beyond travel businesses, because it deals with leavers, customer lists, onboarding and the risks of accepting competitor contacts from new recruits.

The argument was not simply whether former staff could contact old customers. The real dispute was about how the information was obtained and used. Trailfinders said the former consultants had taken confidential customer information and, in one case, continued to obtain more by accessing the old employer’s database after leaving.

TCL argued around issues such as the status of the information, whether the individuals had permission from clients, and whether TCL itself should be responsible. The court also had to deal with the practical reality that some information may be remembered, some may be publicly obtainable, and some may be confidential because of the way it is compiled and stored in a business system.

The court had to decide when customer information is protected as confidential information, what duties employees owe while employed and after they leave, and when a third party receiving that information can also be liable. The judgment worked through both implied contractual duties in employment and the separate equitable duty of confidence.

A central theme was the distinction drawn in earlier case law between information that forms part of a person’s general experience and skills, and information that remains protected because of its confidentiality. The court also considered whether a business receiving customer data from recruits could say it did not know the information was confidential, especially where its own recruitment model encouraged people to bring customer contacts from previous travel roles.

The court found that both Mr La Gette and Mr Bishop were in breach of the implied term of confidence in their employment contracts and also in breach of an equitable obligation of confidence owed to Trailfinders. For Mr Bishop, the findings were especially clear: compiling his contact book while still employed was a breach, and his later access to Viewtrail for 32 clients was also a breach because the judge did not accept that he had client permission.

The judge accepted Mr La Gette’s evidence on balance that his post-employment access to information for about 10 former clients had been with those clients’ permission. Even so, he was still found to have breached duties owed to Trailfinders. TCL was also found liable, not because the franchisees were treated as employees or agents on the evidence, but because TCL received and used customer information in circumstances where it knew or ought to have known Trailfinders would regard it as confidential.

This case is not just about travel consultants. It applies to any business where value sits in customer relationships, CRM records, pricing history, booking references, account notes or buying patterns. The court treated customer information as something more than a list of names. In context, it was part of Trailfinders’ confidential business material.

The judgment is also a warning for businesses that recruit from competitors. If your onboarding process invites people to upload old contacts, import customer lists or “bring their book of business”, you need to ask where that information came from and whether the person is entitled to use it. A business cannot stay deliberately incurious and then rely on lack of actual knowledge if the circumstances point to obvious confidentiality risk.

One of the most commercially important parts of the judgment is the court’s treatment of TCL’s recruitment approach. Its materials told people from a travel background to feel free to bring their old customer contact list, and TCL would add those contacts to its system. That was powerful evidence when the court assessed what TCL ought to have known.

For franchisors, distributors and networks using self-employed operators, the lesson is that labels do not solve the problem. Even if a recruit is not your employee, your business can still be exposed if it receives and uses confidential information from a competitor. Recruitment scripts, brochures, onboarding forms and CRM import processes should all be checked carefully.