By Sara Meyer & Hilary Larter
|Published 08 October 2026
In this case, the High Court found that an employee inadvertently breached his equitable duty of confidence by sharing commission statements with a prospective employer during recruitment discussions. However, the court rejected allegations of business diversion, solicitation, and conspiracy, and held that the restrictive covenants in the employee's contract were unenforceable.
Mr Amos was employed by 360 Recruitment Ltd (360) from July 2021 until March 2026. He joined as a Resourcer and was later promoted through several roles, ultimately becoming a Principal Recruitment Consultant in early 2026. Despite those promotions, his employment contract and post-termination restrictions were never updated.
Having decided that he wished to leave 360, Mr Amos entered into discussions with Barker Ross about potential employment. During those discussions, he shared copies of his commission statements which included margin information relating to clients. 360 later brought claims against Mr Amos and Barker Ross alleging a wide-ranging conspiracy between them to divert business, solicit clients and workers, misuse confidential information and breach restrictive covenants.
The High Court rejected the core factual allegations advanced by 360, finding that there was no agreement between Mr Amos and Barker Ross to evade contractual obligations, no covert plan to redirect work, and no concealment strategy. The court concluded that Mr Amos had genuinely attempted to leave on good terms, and that Barker Ross had taken Mr Amos's obligations to 360 seriously and been anxious to ensure that he complied with them.
Most of the documents that 360 alleged Mr Amos had taken without authorisation did not contain any confidential information. The commission statements did contain information that was confidential to some extent (and both Mr Amos and Barker Ross accepted this). The court held that the information had the necessary quality of confidence, that a reasonable person in Amos’s position should have appreciated its confidential nature, and that it had been disclosed without permission. Mr Amos had therefore breached his equitable duty of confidence to 360.
Crucially, however, the breach was found to be innocent, inadvertent, and purely technical. Mr Amos had only disclosed his commission statements in order to provide proof of his earnings during salary negotiations and the disclosure was not part of any wider scheme. Barker Ross did not use the information for competitive purposes and the disclosure was unlikely to have caused any meaningful loss to 360.
360's claims for breaches of the implied duties of good faith and fidelity and mutual trust and confidence failed. The court emphasised that the disclosure of the commission statements was an isolated mistake that did not involve deliberate disloyalty, solicitation, competition, or misuse of confidential information for personal gain. It did not impair Mr Amos's ability to serve his employer faithfully and honestly and was not conduct likely to destroy trust and confidence.
Turning to the restrictive covenants, the court held that there had on the facts been no infringement or real risk of infringement. The court nonetheless considered the covenants' enforceability, and held that they were unenforceable. The contract was entered into at the start of Mr Amos's employment and validity had to be assessed at that point in time. Restrictions that might have been reasonable for a Principal Recruitment Consultant were not necessarily reasonable for a new Resourcer, and 360 had not established that the seniority Mr Amos had ultimately achieved was reasonably foreseeable when he joined their business.
In addition, the categories of customers and prospective customers on whom the non-solicitation restrictions bit were too broad, as the definitions captured individuals and organisations with whom Mr Amos had only brief or limited contact. The covenants also incorporated lengthy 12‑month look-back provisions that 360 had failed to justify. The court therefore concluded that the restrictions were wider than reasonably necessary to protect 360's legitimate business interests.
This decision underlines the importance of careful drafting of restrictive covenants, to avoid overly broad definitions that may undermine an employer's case that the restrictions go no further than necessary to protect its legitimate business interests.
It also highlights the need to review restrictive covenants when employees are promoted. A covenant that may be justified for a senior employee may not be enforceable if it was imposed when the employee occupied a more junior role. Employers should therefore update contractual protections as responsibilities and client influence increase.
The decision also reminds employers who suspect potential breaches of confidentiality by their employees that they must take care in their attempts to uncover evidence of this. In this case, 360 had failed to identify any compelling evidence of breaches by Mr Amos, despite having conducted extensive monitoring of his online activities. Although the court did not consider it necessary to determine whether there had been a breach of the GDPR, it was highly critical of 360's monitoring practices. It noted that Mr Amos had not been given adequate notice of the nature and extent of the surveillance to which he was liable to be subjected. Nor had 360 demonstrated that its monitoring was compliant with its own policy, which stated that any surveillance would be proportionate, relevant to business needs, and not excessive or intrusive beyond necessity.
360 Recruitment Ltd v (1) Amos (2) Barker Ross Recruitment Ltd
