Angliss Singapore wins lawsuit against ex-staff for misappropriation of information

FOOD distributor Angliss Singapore has won a lawsuit against former employee Roger Yee Heng Khay over the misappropriation of confidential information when he left the company for a competitor. Angliss alleged that this led to the loss of a distributorship it had held for over 40 years.

On Friday, the High Court awarded Angliss S$729,423 in damages.

In an 11-day hearing, the High Court heard how Mr Yee, as Angliss' former business development manager, took over 100 files containing confidential information when he was about to join the company's competitor, Indoguna.

This allowed Indoguna, a meat distributor, to solicit Angliss' key dairy product supplier Arla.

Arla later terminated its distributorship agreement with Angliss, choosing instead to go with Indoguna.

Angliss claimed loss of profits of S$749,000 from this termination, and another S$267,000 from the loss of its chance to enter into a three-year distribution agreement.

In her judgment, Justice Valerie Thean ruled that the documents that Mr Yee got hold of were confidential in nature when considered in their entirety.

The documents contained information such as Arla products sold by Angliss, revenue and customer purchases.

While some of the information could have been in the public domain, Justice Thean said "the value of the list is in the possession of the totality of the information".

She further noted that the food distribution business was "relentlessly competitive" and that the pricing and sales information that Mr Yee had access to was invaluable.

The judge also noted that Mr Yee "surreptitiously" forwarded files to his personal e-mail address and took screenshots of the confidential information as he only had viewing rights within Angliss' information systems while he was a manager.

Justice Thean further ruled that Mr Yee was disingenuous in suggesting that he took Angliss' information to ensure that he could continue to serve Arla's customers while in Indoguna, as he should have known that both companies were competitors and it would be wrong for him to use such confidential information.

While Mr Yee earlier said that he had collected the information for analysis to do better at his job, the judge noted that if this were the case Mr Yee would have analysed other products within his portfolio of about a dozen brands.

Other inconsistencies in Mr Yee's testimony were noted by Justice Thean, such as when he was unable to recall the sales target set for him when he first joined Indoguna in 2018 even though he was the Arla brand manager and was the only person to identify customers for Arla products.

The judge also took issue with the "sheer volume" of information taken by Mr Yee. Although he claimed that he was "customer-centric" and wanted to keep serving Arla customers when he moved to Indoguna, the wide-ranging information he had, including documents on meat distribution, suggested otherwise.

Mr Yee's lawyers had previously claimed that Arla desired an exclusive distribution agreement, which would have prevented Angliss from distributing other dairy brands in competition with Arla.

Yet, Angliss general manager of procurement and shipping Watt Wai Leng testified that both Arla and Angliss understood that the exclusive relationship referred to Arla distributing its products through Angliss alone.

Justice Thean therefore awarded damages to Angliss, and said she will hear counsel on costs.