Breach of contracts help needed

I used to do work for Royal Mail in the UK and one Friday afternoon they terminated my contracts with immediate effect.

Since it was around 16H30 that afternoon I acted in good faith and did not inform my drivers (5 drivers in total) that they terminated my contracts with immediate effect. I wanted them to finish work (without being demoralised) and end the day on a positive. I wanted to call them for a meeting that evening and let them know what the situation was.

The problem I have is that the management at the depot, ushered my staff aside, informed them that the contract was terminated with immediate effect put them under duress (i.e. threatened them with unemployment) and offered them a job.

Firstly, what I would like to know is.
1. Where they right to inform my staff of the termination? Would that not constitute misrepresentation, or a breach of confidentiality?
2. I am currently taking them for 2 breaches plus defamation: the first being that they did not give me the required termination notice and the second is that they offered employment/poached staff (by putting them under duress-they believed that they would not have a job if we lost this contract) under the agreement. Can I sue for either defamation/misrepresentation or breach of confidentiality?
3. I am taking them to court for breach of contract, as they terminated my contracts with immediate effect and the Tuesday following my termination I received a letter to say that they are giving me 35 business days notice.

Thanks for you input, it might be the technical jargon that you guys use on this site that keeps getting me confused, if possible would you kindly point out to me in the above thread, of the three questions, which one did you interpret as I needed direction or to move on with life. I apologise if I did not use the correct grammar in asking my question and if I have not made this mistake then:

I'm absolutely gob-smacked by what I am hearing. So in your opinion its OK for larger blue chip companies to breach contracts and take advantage of smaller companies. My financial investment in this was huge, apart from the time and effort that I put into this. I dedicated all my resources to fulfilling my responsibility. I don't have a problem with them terminating my contracts at all however the problem that I have is the way in which they handled things. And its not far from the advice that you have given here as well. You would make a great ambassador to the Royal Mail Group.

I am pursuing this matter further and just needed a little clarification and guidance from people that I assumed would know the law better than myself, however I have come to realise that you are just as clueless to this, as I am. I posted this thread hoping that someone with a bit of intellectual knowledge in law would be able to answer a few questions and do hope that there are people out there that would be able to offer some kind of assistance rather than just give empty nonsensical time-wasting comments.

This is the way in which things transpired:

I am a limited company who had been subcontracting to Parcelforce for over 4 years, with 5 contracts in place. I had a very good relationship with them and always was given extra work because we guaranteed our work. One day they decided to stop one of my drivers and search the vehicle (of which I did not have a problem). Upon searching the vehicle they discovered a few brand new playstation games (which was not the property of Parcelforce as our parcels have a distinctive package and a postage label, its not something that we deliver) in the vehicle.

They asked the driver where he obtained them from and was told that he purchased them of someone in the area that we works in. Procedure is that they would normally come around with a form and explain that it was a stop and search, then they would search the vehicle and record everything on their form. They should have made a note of the quantity of items found, where it was located and then get him to sign the form acknowledging that everything on the form was true. They then were supposed to call the police in and open a case against the driver of which they did not do as well.

They did not follow the procedures, instead they sent him off and telephoned me and informed me that they no longer require his services. I tried to get a hold of the driver and his phone was off. The driver normally arrives at work by 07h30. Since I could not get a hold of the driver to get an account of the actual events that transpired I decided to go to the depot at 06h00 and load the van in the event that he does not get a hold of me. I did so and left the depot at around 07h30. On route to the deliveries I got a call from the driver informing me that he was on his way to the depot. I met him and took a statement of the events the previous day and found that there was nothing was out of the ordinary. Being a limited company the employment law would not allow me to just get rid of him without good cause.

I made a decision to let him continue working for the day. Parcelforce was not too happy with this and when I spoke to the Operations Manageress about why her staff did not follow procedures she said that they were new and did not know what they were doing (new being that they were employed by Parcelforce for over 5 years). I explained to her that employment law would not allow me to get rid of him so easily with no evidence.

She then went on to say that because I used him on the route they would be terminating my contracts with immediate effect. I told her that she would need to give me 35 days notice and she said no, the decision has been made to terminate the contracts with immediate effect. She then went on to say that she would like to retain my staff and I informed her that we had just secured a new contract with the NHS and they would be employed irrespective of them having a job.

I accepted the events for that day and did not inform any of my drivers that the contracts were terminated so as not to demoralise them and knowing that they would still have a job. Acting in good faith I let them carry on with their work and decided that when they finish for the day I would call a meeting and let them know what had happened as well as inform them that their jobs were safe.

The drivers arrived at the depot they were told to offload the collections and report to the management. They were then ordered to surrender everything that pertains to Parcelforce and were ushered aside and told that the contracts were terminated and that they would be unemployed and were offered a job. The drivers did not know what was happening and believed that they would not have a job and accepted the offer from Parcelforce.

The industry is such that, if they did not any drivers for those contracts they would have been in trouble and their service levels would have fallen and the management would have had to answer to the higher power. Although I did inform the Operations manager that she should not recruit any of my drivers she still went and undermined my authority and by informing my staff of the termination.

Although the contracts were terminated with immediate effect, I did receive a letter a few days later informing me that they are giving me 35 business days notice. This all happened on a Friday afternoon and the new contract was to begin on the Monday, I did not have any drivers to fulfil that contract and had to hire owner drivers and agency staff to cover the work. As a result of this we had to cease trading on those contracts and struggled to get back on our feet. We still had the extra expenses of vehicle leasing and insurances for the year.

I did write to them informing them that they did breach the contract and that they have 14 days to rectify the breach. When I received the second letter I sent them another letter stating my shock as to how they can contradict themselves and send me out a notice if the contracts were terminated with immediate effect.

There is also a clause which reads that:
'Parcelforce Worldwide and the owner driver acknowledge and agree that nothing in this agreement, nor the performance of any services shall result in in the owner driver, or anyone else becoming employees of Parcelforce Worldwide.

My judgement on this is that they acted in bad faith and only had the interest of them at heart, where as I acted in good faith and did not do anything that would bring harm to my client.

That is what the situation is and I have consulted a solicitor who informed me that I do have a case of breach. I just wanted to make sure that this does not happen to other whom invest a lot of time effort and money in these businesses.

I do know that I can take them to court for breach and employing my drivers. However I am also not happy with them acting as an ambassador to my company and informing them that the contracts were being terminated. Its my duty as a director for my company to do this. I have a contract with them and I don't inform their staff of the when there is issue in their company.

Please advise

One more thing! They did not pay me for the 35 days notice as well

I have looked at it carefully, there are no other exclusion clauses. They were entitled to give me 35 business days notice of which they did not and they did recruit my staff. I do have signed statements from the drivers that they have been offered employment, by whom they were offered and who was present when being offered the job.

1. I thought that defamation would hold on the grounds that I did tell them not to recruit my staff, they did know that they were going to cause harm to my company and still went ahead with it.
2. What about breach of confidentiality? Should they as professionals and a blue chip company not know that this information is confidential.
3. Lastly is it not the duty and care of Parcelforce to ensure that their staff is not properly executing their duties. Can I sue them for duty of care as it it their responsibility to ensure that everyone is properly dealt with.

1. Defamation! This is were i see ground for that:
I acted in good faith by not informing my staff of the termination thus ensuring that they would finish their tasks with a 100% dedication and effort. The management and staff at Parcelforce knew that my staff would not accept their offer for employment if they still had a job with me, so what they did instead was to let them know that the contracts were terminated and obviously with families to feed and the threat of no job they accepted the offer.

My staff did not believe in me any more, they lost all respect for me for not informing them first, that the contracts were terminated, I tried to convince them that was still work for them and they still left.

2. Duty of care:
Firstly: They had the contract with me, not my staff. Its their duty to inform me that the contracts were terminated of which they did. In turn its my duty to inform my staff of the situation. Secondly: its their duty to uphold what I said to them: that they should not recruit my staff. They undermined my authority and still went ahead and recruited them, they acted in bad faith for their gain.
(In technical terms and correct me if I'm wrong, from what you guys are saying on here: that although they played a massive part in making sure that my business fails, its OK! because they are a blue chip company and I'm just a small fish)

3. In regards to statement 3. This all happened because the staff at Parcelforce did not follow correct procedures when they stopped my driver, is it not their responsibility to ensure that their staff are fully trained to deal with situation. Because their incompetence I was the one in the wrong.

Anyway it is clear from the responses above that I am hitting a brick wall. I would be dragged to court if the tables were reversed here, and thanks guys for making me see that there is no justice out there.

Understandably that may be 100% correct. There is no point in my trying to 'justify' (funny word this is) that there are people out there that really need help and all we can look at doing is focusing on the monetary value of everything. Do we not get a sense of "satisfaction" by doing a good deed anymore, we all look at every way to earn a £1 but we never look at one way of earning a reward (good deed) without the expectation of financial gain.