How a Breach of Contract Played Out on LinkedIn: Lessons Learned From Optosafe Ltd V Robertson
Posted on in Dispute Resolution
In good news for employers, the High Court has delivered a wake-up call to ex-employees who post online vendettas: in Optosafe Limited & Another v Robertson [2026] EWHC, social media tirades were enough to trigger online harassment findings.
What were the key facts of this case?
A dispute arose from a serious breakdown in the relationship between Optosafe (a security and CCTV-technology company), its senior leadership, and its former director, John Robertson. While Mr Robertson’s employment formally ended in 2021 under a settlement agreement that included non-representation and non-disparagement clauses, Robertson later launched a sustained online campaign against senior leaders of Optosafe, accusing the company of fraud, discrimination, and criminal wrongdoing.
What is a non-representation clause?
This clause prohibits a former employee (or director) from holding themselves out, formally or informally, as still being connected with a company after they have left. This is aimed to protect companies from reputational harm and potential liability which could occur from someone acting as if they still represent the business.
How Robertson breached this clause
After leaving Optosafe, Robertson was using the nickname “John MR Optosafe Robertson” on LinkedIn. This implied that he had an ongoing association with the company (but he did not).
Robertson also incorporated a company called “Sitex Orbis Fraud Investigations Limited”. Orbis Protect is the parent company of Optosafe. Using this name created an impression that Robertson was still affiliated with Optosafe, and by adding “Fraud Investigations” to the name, it implied he had set the company up to investigate fraud within the Orbis Group.
This was misleading, and it was alleged that this could cause reputational damage if people believed Optosafe was under investigation. Both the company name and Mr Robertson’s LinkedIn name were held to amount to Mr Robertson holding himself out as connected with Optosafe.
What is a non-disparagement clause?
This clause is commonly used in a settlement agreement, and it is designed to prohibit a former employee from making negative, derogatory, or harmful public statements about their former employer, staff, its business, or its reputation.
How did Mr Robertson breach the non-disparagement clause?
Mr Robertson carried out a sustained campaign of abusive and damaging communications, sending and publishing around 80 messages in total, primarily on LinkedIn. One example was a post stating, “around this time tomorrow I will be exposing details of a highly illegal fraud”, accusing employees such as Ben Howard (the CEO of Orbis and director of Optosafe) and other employees of fraud. Within the post, he referred to Mr Howard as “Ben Coward” and used an image which portrayed Mr Howard as a clown.
The Court found that Robertson’s conduct was a clear breach of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (“PHA”) and that public messages such as this could be regarded as “taunting public threats” designed to bring Mr Howard and Optosafe into disrepute. Mrs Justice Steyn described the scale of the posting as “a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct”. As a result, the Second Claimant, Benjamin Howard, sought damages for a campaign of harassment which the Court assessed under the PHA.
Section 1(1) PHA prohibits a person from pursuing a “course of conduct” that amounts to harassment and which they know, or ought to know, constitutes harassment. This is an objective test under s.1(2) where the Court determines if a defendant “ought to know” their conduct is harassment by asking if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think so.
Mr Howard succeeded in his harassment claim and was awarded £25,000. An Order was granted to prevent further harassment and contract breaches, and importantly, the Court removed a provision that would have allowed a Defendant to report the Claimants to regulators because they had found that Mr Robertson had used meritless regulatory reports as a tool to inflict further harassment.
Mr Robertson was also given a General Civil Restraint Order, banning him from issuing new claims or applications for three years without prior judicial permission. This decision affirmed that the courts take public posts on social media seriously and posts can constitute harassment, especially when the posts are repeated, abusive, and intended to cause distress.
Did Robertson have a defence?
The main defence presented by Mr Robertson was that his non-disparagement clause was void because it prevented him from whistleblowing. He claimed that his posts and messages were part of legitimate whistleblowing, alleging that he was exposing fraud within Optosafe.
The Court ruled that non-disparagement clauses are enforceable if they permit disclosures to proper authorities. In this instance, the Court found that the clause preserved his right to make protected disclosures to proper authorities but that posting accusations on LinkedIn, which Mr Robertson described as his “echo chamber”, did not constitute a protected disclosure and was instead a “taunting public threat” and an “abuse of media freedom”.
Mr Robertson also relied on s.1(3)(a) PHA, arguing that his posts and messages were justified because he was acting to prevent or detect crime. Section 1(3)(a) PHA sets out a statutory defence to a harassment claim, stating, “subsection 1 does not apply to a course of conduct if the person who pursued it shows that (a) it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime”.
The Judge rejected Mr Robertson’s s.1(3)(a) defence completely as his conduct was not aimed at “preventing or detecting crime”; instead, they viewed his dominant purpose of the communication as intimidation, humiliation, and harassment. This highlights that relying on whistleblowing has a high threshold as a defence and cannot be used as a shield for abusive or defamatory online behaviour.
Significance of this case
The judgment establishes that repeated online posts on platforms like LinkedIn can amount to harassment. This highlights that harassment does not require physical proximity or private threats - harassment by publication is now a fully actionable wrong. This case also highlights how courts are willing to enforce non-representation and non-disparagement clauses robustly where an ex-employee misrepresents a connection with a business or makes disparaging public statements.
It is important to ensure that non-disparagement clauses are drafted very carefully to avoid being deemed void in the event that a dispute arises. The effect could be disastrous.
If your business is suffering from harassment by social media driven campaigns, instructing a lawyer to advise you on your legal options is an important next step to help prevent any further reputational damage.
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