Court blocks WIPL’s bid to inspect company’s info
Published:Tuesday | February 22, 2022 | 12:09 AM
Energy company West Indies Petroleum Limited (WIPL) has lost a bid to get a court order to force a tech firm and three individuals to preserve alleged confidential information and open those details for inspection by the company.
It has also been ordered to pay costs to the defendants.
The Supreme Court, however, granted an injunction to WIPL barring ScanBox Limited, its managing director Winston Henry, Courtney Wilkinson, and John Levy from disclosing information received from WIPL. They have denied allegations against them.
WIPL contracted ScanBox in 2019 to provide IT services, with Henry taken on as a consultant. However, the agreement was terminated in October 2020 when the allegations emerged.
Levy and Wilkinson face several criminal charges in relation to other cases involving WIPL. They were removed as directors in February 2021 but remain shareholders.
The injunction will remain in place until the claim brought by WIPL against the four for alleged unauthorised access to WIPL’s executives’ emails is heard. A date has not been set.
WIPL applied for the injunction in June 2021 and in October, filed another application to get court orders for the defendants to preserve information and allow a search by WIPL officials.
Justice David Batts handed down his ruling on the applications last Friday.
ScanBox and Henry were represented by Lemar Neale of NEA|LEX. Levy and Wilson were represented by Queen’s Counsel Symone Mayhew and Ashley Mair of Mayhew Law.
Queen’s Counsel Georgia Gibson Henlin, Peta-Shea Dawkins, and Shevaniese Arnold argued for WIPL.
Justice Batts said WIPL did not make a strong argument for the turnover of alleged confidential information as ScanBox and Henry made a “credible” case that after the contract was finished, all confidential information was returned.
ScanBox had also contended that the order could endanger its relationship with other clients, adding that WIPL’s application was premature and should await the normal disclosure orders in a civil trial.
Wilkinson and Levy also “credibly” demonstrated that information they had came to them in their positions as directors and shareholders of WIPL, Batts said.
And the judge said based on the report from Shawn Wenzel, a technology expert who owns CaribTek and who WIPL hired to assess the alleged breach, the company already has access to the information it claimed was taken.
Batts also said that WIPL waited too long to seek a preservation order, noting that the company was aware of the alleged breaches from at least December 2020, almost a year before it sought the court’s intervention.
On the injunction, Justice Batts said he was “satisfied” that such a measure was appropriate because “there is little doubt that a prima facie case had been established”.
WIPL built its case on Wenzel’s assessment that there was an alleged email breach that was “the result of a conspiracy” involving Wilkinson and Henry and further that Levy was aware and benefited from the information extracted.
Those claims that the judge referred to were contained in the June 2021 affidavit of Gordon Shirley, WIPL’s board chairman.
Shirley said the publication of the alleged confidential or defamatory information has harmed the company, costing it a financing deal with the National Commercial Bank in December 2020; a February 2021 raid by the Revenue Protection Division, and US$25,000 losses because of the halting of bunkering operations in May 2021 by Jamaica Customs.
The judge also ruled that the fallout from publication of sensitive information “cannot be estimated”.
The defendants claimed that WIPL did not have enough assets to cover any costs that may be due to them if the company ends up losing, but the judge said there were sufficient assets as WIPL pointed to two ships worth US$350,000 each.
Batts ordered costs in favour of the defendants for the October claim that WIPL lost. Other costs are to be calculated following the trial of the substantive case.