Background
MEX Group Worldwide Limited alleges that its former general counsel, Adam Duthie, breached undertakings contained in a July 2024 consent order. The undertakings restricted his disclosure and use of confidential information and his communications with defendants in specified proceedings involving the MultiBank Group. MEX’s contempt application alleges that Duthie supplied a skeleton argument to a defendant in related litigation and communicated with another defendant concerning British Virgin Islands proceedings.
Days before the scheduled three-day contempt hearing, Duthie sought an adjournment, permission to introduce additional affidavits, and numerous procedural directions. He alternatively proposed dividing the case into two stages, with the first addressing construction and breach of the undertakings and the second addressing his contention that MEX had pursued contempt proceedings for an improper collateral purpose.
The Court’s Holding
Mr Justice Cavanagh refused to adjourn or split the contempt hearing. He held that its relevant issues were comparatively narrow: the meaning and scope of the undertakings, whether Duthie breached them, and whether the application was hopeless or concerned only a technical breach such that it might constitute an abuse of process. MEX’s or its chairman’s subjective motive and conduct in other litigation were irrelevant to that inquiry. The court emphasized that it was identifying the issues, not deciding whether contempt had occurred.
The court permitted Duthie to rely on paragraphs 7–23 of his second affidavit because they addressed his dealings with one of the relevant defendants, but excluded the remainder and refused to admit the late affidavits of Raed Salahat and Yazan Khalil Almashene. Those affidavits were irrelevant to the issues for the contempt hearing, seriously delayed, and, in Almashene’s case, unsworn. MEX was permitted to rely on Benjamin Sigler’s second affidavit solely for the narrow question whether the undertakings were breached.
The court rejected Duthie’s remaining proposed directions as unnecessary, unsupported, or made too late. It extended the deadline for both parties’ skeleton arguments to noon on 3 November 2026, allowed the contempt hearing to proceed as listed, and reserved the costs of the applications to the judge hearing the contempt case.
Key Takeaways
- A claimant’s hostility or desire for retribution does not itself make a contempt application abusive when the application objectively brings an allegedly serious contempt before the court.
- An abuse-of-process inquiry may address whether a contempt application is hopeless or concerns only a technical breach, but it does not ordinarily require investigation of the applicant’s subjective motive.
- Late evidence may be excluded under the relief-from-sanctions principles where it is irrelevant, unexplained, prejudicial, or would require adjournment of a long-scheduled hearing.
Why It Matters
The ruling confines the forthcoming contempt hearing to construction of the undertakings, proof of breach, and the limited abuse-of-process questions recognized by the authorities. It prevents the hearing from expanding into a broader examination of the parties’ conduct and motives across other litigation.
For practitioners, the decision also illustrates the difficulty of introducing extensive evidence and new case-management demands immediately before an expedited contempt hearing, even where the respondent faces potentially serious consequences.