The case concerns a dispute between the National Education Union (NEU), formerly the National Union of Teachers (NUT), and TimePlan, a supply teacher agency which mainly recruits Antipodean teachers for work in the UK. The NEU's dispute with TimePlan is over the rates of pay paid by TimePlan to its teachers which the NEU say undercut nationally agreed pay rates and the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Act 1991.
When the NEU saw that TimePlan was using the New Zealand Teaching Union (NZEI) Journal to advertise to recruit teachers, they raised their concerns with NZEI, their sister union. Ms Hufford, Deputy General Secretary of the NEU, wrote to NZEI setting out the nature and background to the dispute with TimePlan and suggested that NZEI "might consider it inappropriate to carry the advertisements [of TimePlan] in the future".
NZEI did pull the advertisements from the next issue of the journal, and by doing so breached their contract with TimePlan. TimePlan sued the NEU for having wrongfully interfered with their contract with NZEI.
The Court of Appeal restated the five conditions, each of which TimePlan had to prove, in order to succeed in their case:
that the NEU did persuade, procure or induce a third party - ie NZEI - to break a contract with TimePlan that the NEU had knowledge of the contract between NZEI and TimePlan - knowledge of its existence, rather than the detailed terms would be sufficient that the NEU intended to persuade, procure or induce a breach of contract by NZEI that TimePlan had suffered more than nominal damage as the NEU said their criticisms of TimePlan were true and justified, TimePlan had to succeed in rebutting the justification argument.
The High Court Judge found in favour of TimePlan. Although stopping short of granting an injunction, he ordered an Inquiry into the damages to be paid by the NEU to TimePlan as a result of the breaches by NZEI.
The Court of Appeal has now overturned the High Court Judge's order. The case turned on whether there was evidence that NEU had knowledge of the contract between TimePlan and NZEI and whether they had intended to persuade, procure or induce NZEI to breach their contract with TimePlan.
The case highlights the importance of the care to be taken in any correspondence where the issue of wrongful interference might arise, and the need to meticulously prepare evidence before any trial.
Importantly, the Court of Appeal found that Ms Hufford's letter was mild and the words "you might consider it inappropriate to carry the advertisements in future" could not be taken as an intention to wrongfully interfere with the contract. The fact that the letter succeeded in persuading NZEI to pull the advertisements was not sufficient to make the case against the NEU.
Also, Ms Hufford had given evidence in the Court about her ignorance of the contract between NZEI and TimePlan for continuing adverts. This and other evidence in the case suggested that the NEU did not know about the contract and so the original judgment of the High Court was flawed in this respect as well.
This case is a victory for common sense and a restatement of basic principles - that in order to succeed in a claim, the Plaintiff must establish that all the ingredients of the tort have been committed.