Ex-beer company staff snubs court order for home search

A former employee of Nile Breweries has reportedly dodged a High Court order to open his residence and be searched for allegedly leaking out business secrets contained in 125 e-mails to a business competitor.
On March 18, Justice Patricia Mutesi of the Commercial Division of the High Court in Kampala, directed Mr Johnson Sebuggwawo, a former trade marketing executive with Nile Breweries, to open his house in Kyadondo, Masoli, and Wakiso District to facilitate a search for evidence.

It is alleged that Mr Sebuggwawo, three months to resignation from Nile Breweries to join a competitor company, sent 125 e-mails from his work mail to his private email, believed to be containing very sensitive information on how Nile Breweries carries out its business.

However, Mr Sebuggwawo did not show up and instead sent his sister and a brother-in-law, who only opened the gate and not the door/s to the main house, hence frustrating the court order.
“We proceeded for an execution yesterday at Johnson’s place in the company of the police, he refused to come to his place as he kept making empty promises that he was on his way. He sent his lawyer, Joshua Bowen, who read and acknowledged the order and advised Johnson to make his way home but he was in fear and kept telling his lawyer that he was on his way,” court attachments seen by this newspaper read in part.

“Johnson after that, sent his sister and brother-in-law with the house keys but when the two arrived, they opened the gate but refused to open the house creating all kinds of flimsy excuses. We were, therefore, unable to execute the court order because we were denied permission to enter the premises. A return of the foregoing events was made, police officers, the local authorities, and neighbours witnesses the return by signing.”
 
How it started
Court documents show that between March 26 2012 and April 4, Mr Sebuggwawo was working with Nile Breweries.
He started out as a data specialist and rose to a distributor specialist, a draught supervisor, distributor manager, and finally, a trade marketing executive. Shortly after his resignation from Nile Breweries, he got employed by Uganda Breweries Ltd, its competitor.

This prompted suspicion by the management of Nile Breweries who carried out an investigation and discovered that Mr Sebuggwawo had between January 9, 2023, and 29th March, 2023, sent out 125 e-mails from his work mail to his private email, thereby, copying/sharing its confidential business secrets without any authorisation.

Nile Breweries then filed a lawsuit against Mr Sebuggwawo for breach of the employment contract and unauthorised disclosure of its business secrets. 
As the main suit was still pending determination before the court, Nile Breweries further decided to file an application known as anton piller, for the court to issue express orders to have the home of Mr Sebuggwawo searched and seized of any or all computers, documents, materials or articles found there related to its trade secrets.

An anton piller order, is a court order which requires the defendant in the proceedings to permit the plaintiff or his or her lawyer to enter his/her home in order to obtain evidence essential to the plaintiff’s case.
Anton piller orders have become one of the most powerful ways of fighting the infringement of rights across Commonwealth countries. 

Justice Mutesi view
In her analysis, while granting the anton piller order to have the residence of Mr Sebuggwawo searched, Justice Mutesi observed that she was satisfied that Nile Breweries had made out a strong prima facie case against Mr Sebuggwawo for breaching the confidentiality clauses in his employment contract.
She further observed that the 125 e-mails contained a wide range of sensitive business information like marketing strategies and statistics.

“Based on the evidence of him sending the 125 e-mails to his personal e-mail address, the respondent (Mr Sebuggwawo) appears to have replicated the information therein without authorisation,” Justice Mutesi ruled.

14-days ultimatum
Further in her ruling, Justice Mutesi directed Mr Sebuggwawo to within 14 days from the date of her ruling, allow Nile Breweries access to his residence and in the company of lawyers only, which directive never came to pass.
The judge also ordered that all computers, documents, materials or articles found Mr Sebuggwawo’s residence relating to the alleged infringement of Nile Breweries’s trade secrets be seized.

The search process was not supposed to take more than 12 hours and that all the seized material was to be taken to the registrar of the court for custody.