Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

High Court (England and Wales, Commercial Court): unjust enrichment for BT portal overpayment; IP licence fee and development overcharge claims fail in Quinn Infrastructure v Sullivan

Published on: 27 November 2019

Published by a LexisNexis TMT expert

Legal News

Article summary

Quinn Infrastructure Services Ltd v Sullivan and others [2019] EWHC 2863 (Comm)

What are the practical implications of this case?

The decision turned predominantly on the particular facts and depended heavily on specialist opinion, yet it clearly flags points practitioners must watch carefully when counselling clients on arrangements. Loose, undocumented understandings can create difficulties if not properly recorded and memorialised. It further underlines the core rule that a party cannot recover for a loss it has not actually sustained. Lastly, it exemplifies the difficulties posed by so-called ‘blind alley’ efforts on prototypes that were never deployed or delivered, and, in practice, the task of assessing what amounts to a fair fee for work performed.

What was the background?

The claimant provided engineers to BT. The first defendant acted as a de facto director and was subsequently thereafter made managing director of the claimant’s telecoms arm. The second defendant, a personal associate of the first defendant, was an IT consultant who operated through the third and fourth defendant companies, which were both under his control. Purporting to act for the claimant, the first defendant retained the second to fourth defendants to deliver in particular IT services to the claimant. These services...

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