Billionaire tycoon Sir Frederick Barclay and his daughter Amanda have won a preliminary skirmish in a family dispute over a bug allegedly placed in the Ritz Hotel by Sir David Barclay’s son Alistair.
They are suing three of Sir David’s sons – Alistair, Aidan and Howard – Aidan’s son Andrew and Philip Peters, a board director of the Barclay Group. They allege misuse of private information, breach of confidence and breach of data protection laws in a case that they filed in January.
Since then lawyers for the parties have been arguing over access to the recordings, described as “commercial espionage on a vast scale”, by Sir Frederick’s legal team in documents prepared for a court hearing that started yesterday.
The recordings, they say, “captured over 1,000 separate conversations over a period of months. They run to 94 hours of audio recordings”. According to an earlier ruling, they took place between November and January this year.
“A separate Wi-Fi bug was also used, which had been supplied by Quest Global Ltd, a private investigations firm (with offices in London and Qatar), who invoiced for 405 hours of their time to listen and transcribe the recordings,” the lawyers say.
They say that they cover “private, confidential, personal and … privileged conversations with … lawyers, … trustees, bankers and businesspeople”.
And, in addition, they claim that the defendants sold the Ritz Hotel “at what appears to be half the market price” after learning through the recordings that Sir Frederick had received an offer of £1.3bn for the hotel from a different investor.
However, lawyers for the defendants say that these allegations are “heavy spin”.
Their barrister, Heather Rogers QC “has stressed that this is a dispute between family members… and it is unfortunate they are being canvassed in public”, Mr Justice Warby said today, giving judgment in preliminary issues.
Rogers argued “this is not a case in which private information has been obtained and disseminated to the press”. In addition, Rogers also argues that the defendants have given undertakings not to use any of the information they obtained, and say they aren’t using them and aren’t disseminating them.
This week’s hearing is a preliminary skirmish over access to transcripts of the recordings, ongoing costs and legal privilege.
However, much of the dispute about privilege and access has become “history”, Mr Justice Warby said. As a result, Sir Frederick’s legal team want the claimants to pay the legal costs of those arguments, and pay for the work they have done transcribing the recordings that they received. The transcriptions alone, they say, cost more than £500,000.
In his judgment today Mr Justice Warby said that Sir Frederick was entitled to some costs at this stage. He said there is “no reason why” they should have to wait “many months” or until after the end of the case.
However, he said it was “not inappropriate” for the costs to be assessed by a costs judge to ensure they are “proportionate and reasonable”.
“The sums involved are very large indeed,” he said.
