The High Court has temporarily barred Nicole Henkel Murphy from operating yoga teacher training courses for students she enrolled in two groups while she was a franchisee of Irish School of Yoga Limited. The injunction will remain in force until the substantive action is heard.
In a judgment delivered on 28 May 2012, Ms Justice Laffoy also ordered Murphy to deliver completed student application forms to the company under court protection. The court noted her undertakings not to present herself as connected with the company, use intellectual property claimed by it, or make positive use of its claimed database and customer records. She also undertook not to contact 19 former students to offer services, while remaining free to serve anyone in that group who approached her unsolicited.
The dispute arose from a franchise agreement made in 2008. Murphy notified the company in October 2011 that she was terminating it. The company accepted that the agreement had ended by 10 November, although it alleged her termination breached the agreement. The court made no determination on whether either side had breached the contract.
The company argued that Murphy had retained and used confidential student information to attract students to courses she ran after leaving the franchise. Murphy disputed the company’s claims and alleged that it had failed to meet its own contractual obligations. The judge found a fair issue to be tried over whether Murphy’s use of information about current and prospective students breached the agreement’s confidentiality clause. She did not resolve the factual conflicts on the interim application.
The order concerns eight students from the autumn 2010 group who remained with Murphy, and 16 from the autumn 2011 group. The judge considered damages inadequate if the company later succeeded at trial, and said the company’s undertaking to compensate Murphy if the injunction proved wrongly granted provided adequate redress on the evidence before the court.
The injunction does not prevent Murphy from setting up a competing business generally. The court had accepted that she was free to do so after the franchise ended; the interim restriction applies to teaching the specified students. The court also invited the parties to use an alternative dispute resolution process for their remaining differences. It did not order them to mediate.