What started as a generous exit became an 18-month digital harassment nightmare
When Samantha Jane Bradley's employment at Sir Elly Kadoorie & Sons Limited ended in December 2020, she walked away with a generous severance package. The company paid her HK$24.92 million in termination payments and offered an additional consultancy agreement worth HK$8 million annually for three years. By June 2021, the company terminated that consultancy arrangement.
What happened next became the subject of a landmark ruling from Hong Kong's highest court on January 9, 2026.
Between December 2020 and May 2022, Bradley sent more than 500 emails to her former employer, its officers, employees, and lawyers at Simmons & Simmons. The messages were repetitive and hostile, containing allegations of dishonesty, suppression of evidence, breaches of anti-money laundering obligations, conspiracy to injure, fraud, corporate manslaughter, breaches of law and professional conduct, modern slavery and other misconduct towards Bradley, intimidation, harassment, bullying, defamation, discrimination and victimisation, bad faith, exposure of Bradley to criminality, and coercion to enter into the separation and consultancy agreements. She characterised the agreements as "hush money" to deter reports to regulators and alleged breaches of the agreements. The court noted that the vast majority of these allegations were wholly untrue and without factual foundation.
Bradley had joined the company's legal department in 2009 and by 2013 became Director of Legal and Trust Management. In September 2020, she asserted that she would succeed her supervisor but the controlling families decided otherwise. Despite the substantial payout designed to ensure a smooth transition, the email campaign began shortly after her departure.
The impact was severe. One director required medical attention for stress and anxiety. Other employees experienced significant distress and annoyance. Even when Bradley later directed emails only to the company's lawyers, the serious nature of her allegations meant they had to immediately notify company officers and employees, perpetuating the harm. The company spent over HK$10 million in legal fees responding to the situation.
The company sought court intervention to stop the harassment, but faced a legal puzzle: could a corporation obtain an injunction to protect its employees from harassment when the company itself cannot sue for harassment? Only natural persons can experience the anxiety and distress that defines the tort.
The Court of Final Appeal said yes, in a decision that expands how employers can protect their workforce. The court confirmed for the first time that Hong Kong's common law recognizes harassment as a tort, though only individuals can sue for it.
More significantly for employers, the court ruled that companies can seek injunctions to prevent harassment of their employees based on a longstanding duty: providing a safe working environment. The court extended this traditional safety obligation into the digital realm and to include protection from former employees.
As the judgment stated, "where an employee is subjected to harassment by another person (whether a co-worker, a former co-worker, or even a third party) in the course of their employment, and where the harassment is, in substance, directed at the employer, the employer ought to have standing to seek injunctive relief to protect the employee."
The court acknowledged practical realities that HR professionals know well. Employees may be reluctant to pursue legal action against harassers even if their employer offers to fund the litigation. They worry about career implications, whether funding will continue if they change jobs, and potential retaliation. The judgment noted: "It seems to us that a much more appropriate and realistic approach would be to accept, in principle, that there is no objection to a corporate employer seeking an injunction in such circumstances."
The protection extends beyond physical office premises to employees' homes and digital platforms, particularly relevant in the post-pandemic era of remote work. However, the court limited this employer-sought protection to harassment connected to the workplace, not employees' personal lives.
For HR leaders, this case establishes that workplace safety duties now encompass shielding staff from harassment campaigns, even by former colleagues, and that companies have legal standing to act when employees might hesitate to do so themselves.
