The High Court has struck out one part of Rippling's defamation case against Deel while allowing two other contested pleas to remain in proceedings arising from allegations of corporate espionage and a subsequent conspiracy to create a false account of events.
Mr Justice Mark Sanfey delivered judgment on 20 March 2026 on an application by Deel Inc to remove parts of an amended statement of claim filed by People Centre Inc, trading as Rippling, and Rippling Ireland Limited.
Rippling alleges that former employee Keith O'Brien secretly provided confidential information and trade secrets to Deel. It further alleges that, after urgent High Court orders were obtained in March 2025, O'Brien and several Deel defendants agreed to promote a false narrative involving alleged sanctioned payments to Russia. Those allegations are denied by the defendants.
Deel originally sought to strike out eleven paragraphs, but by the hearing only three remained in dispute: paragraphs 30, 54 and 67.
The court struck out paragraph 30, which alleged a defamatory publication by Deel defendants to O'Brien himself. On Rippling's pleaded case, O'Brien was allegedly a participant in the conspiracy who knew the narrative was false. The judge held that a statement known by both speaker and recipient to be false could not injure Rippling's reputation in O'Brien's eyes and therefore could not be defamatory.
The court declined to strike out paragraph 54. That paragraph referred to alleged disregard for the professional reputations of solicitors involved in the dispute. Rippling confirmed it was not advancing an independent defamation claim on behalf of those firms, and the judge held the paragraph could remain as potentially relevant context for the broader conspiracy and defamation claims.
The court also refused to strike out paragraph 67, under which Rippling seeks to recover legal costs, including costs incurred before Deel was joined in April 2025. The judge held that Deel's arguments under the Civil Liability Act 1961 were not sufficiently straightforward to justify determining that issue summarily before trial.