The Court of Appeal has overturned a recent High Court decision and confirmed that a company can have access to the emails of a former director of the company.

The former director and the company are in dispute and the company sought access to emails held on his personal computer that related to its business. The email messages had passed through the company’s servers, but the system was set up to delete them automatically when they were forwarded to the director’s personal email address, so it no longer had copies of them.

The company claimed that the emails were its property and it should be allowed to inspect and copy them. The former director claimed that the emails were ‘information’ over which the company could not claim ownership.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the company did have the right to access emails in the possession of a former employee where these related to the business of the company.

LJ Mummery ruled that, for the purposes of deciding whether or not an employer has the right of inspection and copying in such circumstances, an email should be treated, in effect, as if it were a document. This does not amount to having a proprietary right and having a proprietary right to the email is not a necessity for such an order to be made.