Angela Emmerson v Human Givens Institute Limited

This dispute started with a professional membership relationship, not a public regulator. Mrs Emmerson was a member of the Human Givens Institute and agreed to follow its code and complaints procedure as part of her membership contract. She had counselled a married couple together and separately over a number of years.

After the couple separated, the husband asked her for a letter to support him in divorce proceedings. He gave permission to use what he had told her and suggested a narrow set of topics. But the letter she wrote went much further. It referred to couple counselling, individual sessions, the date counselling started, what happened in a joint session when the wife said she wanted a divorce, and her professional view of the relationship dynamics.

The wife complained to the Institute. She said the letter disclosed confidential information about her, included too much detail and should not have been written in that form. The Institute’s Adjudication Panel upheld important parts of the complaint, and the Appeal Panel agreed. Mrs Emmerson then asked the High Court to set those decisions aside, arguing that the Institute had acted unfairly and unreasonably under the membership contract.

The court was not deciding the divorce dispute or whether the therapy opinions were clinically right. The real question was whether the Institute, as a private membership body, had breached its contract with Mrs Emmerson when it disciplined her.

The parties agreed that the contract included implied duties requiring the Institute to act in accordance with natural justice and to make decisions that were reasonable in the public-law style sense described in the judgment as Wednesbury reasonableness. That meant the court had to ask two practical questions. First, was the complaints process fair? Second, were the findings against Mrs Emmerson rationally open to the panels on the material before them?

Mrs Emmerson argued that the process was unfair because the complainant did not attend the hearing and there was no proper evidence identifying what information in the letter was confidential to Mrs A. She also argued that the panels had no proper basis for concluding that the letter disclosed Mrs A’s confidential information or that it contained excessive and inappropriate detail.

The High Court dismissed Mrs Emmerson’s claim. It held that the Institute’s process was fair and that its decisions were well within the range of reasonable outcomes open to it. The court said the Institute had clearly set out the allegations, given her the relevant documents, allowed detailed written responses, allowed legal representation, heard from her directly, and provided a right of appeal with reasoned decisions.

On confidentiality, the court said the letter itself spoke for itself. It identified three categories of information that plainly disclosed Mrs A’s confidential information: that she had attended couple counselling and individual counselling with dates; that she attended the joint session on 1 March 2017 and announced she wanted a divorce; and that information had been shared in joint sessions about home stresses, advice given to help her, and what both spouses had said about whether that advice was being followed.

The court also held that the letter went far beyond the husband’s request, which had been limited to diagnosis, treatment and duration. Because some of the information was confidential and the detail was excessive, the panel was entitled to find the content inappropriate as well.

The most useful lesson from this case is how easily a business can cross the line when preparing a letter for litigation, a complaint, a reference or a dispute. The problem was not only the opinion that Mr A had been in an emotionally abusive relationship. The court focused on something more basic: the letter confirmed confidential facts about Mrs A and about what happened in confidential sessions.

That matters because many SMEs assume confidentiality is only breached if they reveal a secret diagnosis, quote private words or share a file. This judgment shows that disclosure can happen in smaller ways. Saying that someone was a client, giving dates, describing attendance at joint sessions, recounting a key event witnessed in a confidential setting, or summarising what both parties said can all be enough.

The court also treated the wording of the letter as important on its face. Even if the writer later said she meant something narrower, the question was how the words would reasonably be read. For businesses, that means after-the-event explanations may not rescue a badly drafted letter.

This case is also useful for any business that runs complaints, membership discipline, accreditation reviews or internal misconduct processes. The court accepted that a private body can be required by contract to act fairly, but fairness is shaped by context. A private membership organisation does not always need to run a full trial-like process.

Here, the court said the essentials of natural justice were met because the member knew the allegations, had the documents, could respond in writing, could attend with legal representation, and had an appeal. The court rejected the argument that fairness required live evidence from the complainant on every point. Where the disputed document itself showed the problem, the panel could decide the issue without that witness attending.

For SMEs, this is a practical standard. If you are disciplining a member, contractor or employee under a contract or policy, focus on notice, response opportunity, impartial decision-making and reasons. You do not need courtroom formality, but you do need a process that is genuinely fair and can be explained later.

If your business is asked to provide a letter, statement or report for court, a complaint, a regulator, an insurer or a dispute, pause before sending anything. The safest approach is to identify whose information is involved, what authority you actually have, and whether the request can be answered in a narrower way.

This is especially important where your business dealt with more than one person in the same matter, such as co-founders, spouses, business partners, joint account holders, team members in a grievance, or parties to a mediation. Shared settings create overlapping confidentiality issues. One person’s consent may not solve the problem.

The case sits in a therapy and membership-body setting, but the lesson travels well. Any business that holds sensitive information can face the same problem when one person asks for a supporting letter that also touches another person’s confidential position. That can happen in HR disputes, founder fallouts, customer complaints, safeguarding matters, internal investigations and professional references.

The judgment also links privacy risk with governance risk. The Institute succeeded partly because it had a code, a complaints procedure, an appeal route and a documented process. Businesses often focus only on whether a disclosure was right or wrong. This case shows you should also think about whether your internal decision-making process would stand up if challenged later.

In short, control the document, control the process and control the audience. Keep letters narrow, avoid unnecessary narrative, and make sure any disciplinary or complaints decision can be traced back to a fair procedure and a rational explanation.