The legal battle between Reunert and John Holdsworth, and his new company AppChat, took a dramatic turn in the high court in Pretoria on Tuesday.
The court ruled that AppChat and Holdsworth, who is the former CEO of Reunert subsidiary ECN Telecommunications (now Nashua ECN), may not hire current or “erstwhile” employees of Reunert until a hearing is held at the end of May.
Holdsworth has promised to file a comprehensive answering affidavit next week, in which he will outline his counter arguments.
After Tuesday’s court hearing, Reunert said the court had “directed Holdsworth to abide by the terms of the restraint contained in his contract of employment”. But Holdsworth counters this, saying only “certain limited relief” was granted to Reunert pending the full hearing by the court. He also says he is not in breach of his restraint, as claimed by Reunert, and that “it’s business as usual” for AppChat.
Holdsworth says Reunert had sought “extensive relief”, which he says it was not granted.
Reunert wants the high court to enforce a restraint of trade against Holdsworth, whom it accuses of poaching key employees from Nashua ECN and hiring them to work at AppChat. The new company plans to launch a mobile virtual network operator piggybacking on one of the mobile operators’ networks. It wants to offer discounted voice calls over mobile data networks.
Reunert, which bought ECN last year in a deal worth R172m, also accuses Holdsworth of using his knowledge of ECN’s product development plans to benefit AppChat unlawfully (see article) and says the company has long had plans to launch a mobile voice-over-data service of its own.
Last week, Holdsworth said in comments e-mailed to TechCentral that Reunert’s claim that AppChat was establishing a business in competition with Nashua ECN was “transparent nonsense”.
“The voice market is an entirely separate and different market from the mobile voice market,” he said. Nashua ECN has said it is planning to launch its own mobile voice product and that Holdsworth is aware of this by virtue of being privy to the plans when still in the company’s employ.
In the e-mail to TechCentral, Holdsworth also accused Reunert of being a “corporate bullyboy” and using ECN as a “proxy for one of its other companies, Nashua Mobile, in order to stifle future competition in the mobile market”.
“Reunert’s strategy is to shut down AppChat and place all 15 of its staff and their families on the street,” he said in the e-mail. “We will defend ourselves and are not intimidated by their anticompetitive bullyboy tactics.” — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media