Diversion of telephone numbers amount to unlawful interference with business

A breach of contract can constitute “unlawful means” for the purpose of the tort of unlawful interference with business was the decision reached in Mark Mennel & Others v T Mobile (UK) Ltd & Others.

Accordingly a claimant could sue for damages under the tort of unlawful interference with business where the defendant had a specific intention to cause economic harm to the claimant.

What happened here was that Mark Mennel (MM) held a telephone number that was used by him personally and for business as a director with clients of Extendaloft Limited(E). At a time in the past the number and account was transferred in to the name of E. This business ceased trading but it agreed orally with MM and Laurence Stock (LS) (as a director of E) that MM would keep the number and MM and LS divided up the telephone numbers and goodwill associated with them.

MM later set up a new company having transferred the telephone account to T-Mobile(T) (but leaving E as account holder) and began to use a different telephone number but on the same old account for this new business.

LS saw the advertising and instructed T on E’s headed paper to suspend the two numbers and divert calls to another telephone number used by E. MM brought claims for an injunction and damages against LS,E and T.

The High Court decided LS breached the oral contract by instructing T to divert the calls as the contract made gave control and use to MM. However LS,E and T were not liable to the new company  Loft Logic Limited (LL)under contract law as they were not a party to any agreement with LL.

The instructions to divert the phone numbers would have been obvious to SL that it would have an effect on LL’s business. This involved a breach of the previous oral agreement and this could in itself amount to “unlawful means” for the purpose of the tort of unlawful interference with trade.

Since there was no contract between MM,SL and T over the use of the numbers/accounts not only could there not be any claims for breach of contract but as there was no evidence here that any party had knowledge of any contract these three could not be liable in tort for procuring a breach of that contract.

Essentially the oral contract gave grounds for claiming breach of contract plus a claim in tort for unlawful interference with business but the claimant’s position would have been made much easier if he had asked for a written contract between himself, LS and E over the use and ownership of the numbers. That should have prevented T from diverting in the first place and would have avoided lost customer revenue, goodwill and management time.

We can help here draft migration and ownership agreements relating to business addresses, telephone numbers, domain names, websites, blogs and links all of which affect the revenue streams of business in very real practical terms, in the both real and virtual worlds.

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