The High Court has awarded Action Alarms Limited €148,324.89 in its contract claim against Top Security Limited over unpaid monitoring commissions. The award includes €95,528 in damages, €21,971.44 in VAT and €30,825.45 in interest under the Courts Act 1981. The court has not yet decided costs.
The dispute concerned customers Action had introduced to Top’s monitoring service. Action said it continued to maintain the alarm systems and connections for customers who stayed with Top after Action began moving others to its own monitoring service in late 2008 or early 2009. Top stopped sending commission reports after January 2009 and paid no commission for monitoring fees received after December 2008.
Top argued that commission depended on Action supporting its relationship with customers, and that Action’s move to compete for those customers ended or breached the agreement. The court rejected that position. It found the parties had a binding commercial agreement, partly written and partly oral, that included commission payments. The court understood Action’s duty to support the relationship as maintaining the physical connection between customers’ alarms and Top’s monitoring centre.
The judge found Action continued that work for customers who remained with Top. The agreement did not prevent Action from asking customers to transfer to its own service, and Top had not established a term allowing it to stop commission for customers who declined to transfer. The court also found that withholding commission in those circumstances would penalise Action for exercising the transfer right set out in a 1989 letter.
The proceedings began in 2014 and reached a third substantive hearing in January 2022 after the judge who heard the 2019 trial became indisposed before delivering judgment. The court awarded interest from the date proceedings were instituted, citing the unpaid contractual amounts and Top’s failure to provide information that prolonged the litigation.
The judgment was against Top, the second defendant. The court directed the parties to file written submissions on costs and listed the matter for a remote mention on 21 February 2022. It made no final costs order in this judgment.