High Court orders further disclosure in Nualtra case

The High Court has ruled there should be further disclosure of documentation in advance of a trademark infringement case being taken against an Irish nutritional supplement products supplier.

Limerick-based Nualtra Ltd is being sued by Dutch nutritional supplement product supplier, Nutrimedical BV, for alleged infringement of the "Nutriplen" trademark. Nualtra is backed by businessmen Leslie Buckley and Sean Corkery.

London-based Aymes International, whose principal is Roger Wertheim Aymes, has been joined as a co-plaintiff with Nutrimedical.

Nualtra, which had fully denied any trademark infringement, has counter-claimed alleging Aymes was involved in a concerted efforts over a prolonged period of time to undermine its business since the time Nualtra refused to license its products bearing the ‘Nutriplen’ name to Aymes.

It is also alleging abuse of civil process in which it claims serious misconduct by Aymes International.

It has claimed Mr Aymes instructed one of his senior employees to impersonate a UK National Health Service (NHS) representative to obtain information over the phone from Nualtra Ltd which was later used in an attempt to undermine Nualtra's business.

Forged email

As a result of the information Aymes obtained, a number of NHS employees were sent a forged email letter in November 2014 purporting to be on behalf of the NHS, Nualtra says.

The letter made serious allegations about Nualtra which the Irish firm says were unfounded.

Nualtra obtained a court order in the UK in which it discovered the forged letter was sent by the senior Aymes director who had been instructed by Mr Aymes to make the original phone call in which that employee posed as a person called ‘Chris Baker’ in order to obtain the information.

It later transpired there was no such person in the relevant NHS division, Nualtra says.

A second anonymous letter, also authored by Aymes, was sent to 848 GP practices in July 2015 again making what Nualtra says were damaging and unfounded allegations.

Both Nutrimedical and Nualtra sought orders form the court requiring the other side to discover documents in advance of the hearing of the trademark action.

Limit

Mr Justice Max Barrett ordered Nualtra to provide certain documents but without a limit on the period of time that should cover, as sought by Nualtra.

He also ordered Nutrimedical to discover categories of documents sought by Nualtra in accordance with well-established case law.

It was difficult to imagine a case in which established law would have a greater resonance “than in the peculiar circumstances presenting in this case”, he said.

This was given the admitted past behaviour of Aymes International towards Nualtra and the fact Aymes “has not scrupled in the past to see its lawyers and this court misled”, he said.

It was also in circumstances with a general pattern of behaviour by Aymes International and the fact it did not admit, until legal action was taken against it, the truth about the first anonymous email to NHS employees in 2014, he said.