Social media influencers and liability in the world of fashion: The Georgia Aldridge case

Of course, and thanks so much for having me on again.

So, um, LVMH, for anyone who, who doesn't know, is, um, one of the leading fashion conglomerates, and they own, uh, many of the luxury fashion brands, including the claimants in this case.

The defendants, Rolo Fashions and Georgia Aldridge, were operating a WhatsApp group where they would offer high fashion items from Fendi, Loewe, Dior, Celine or Louis Vuitton, and others for sale to members of the group at cut prices.

And the group referred to the items being offered, and often offered with pictures, as mirror quality or one-on-one, which is code in that world for high quality counterfeits or, um, what's become to be known as super fakes.

And, um, the, the group would then take orders from members, and they would then drop ship those goods into the UK.

So e- each order would be individually shipped into the UK.

There wasn't a logistics operation.

Uh, they'd be drop shipped into the UK for those customers and delivered directly to them, and one presumes Rolo Fashions and Ms. Aldridge were taking a cut, uh, in, as a middleman.

Um, the group was tacitly advertised on Ms. Aldridge's social media pages and had amassed quite a big following, uh, over 1,000 members, when in August 2024, LVMH's brand protection team managed to get themselves an invite to it, and they made several test purchases confirming the goods were high-end counterfeits.

Now, I was instructed at that point by LVMH, who decided to apply for a freezing injunction to freeze Ms. Aldridge and Rolo's assets.

And as a separate point to that freezing injunction, as a corollary, they got, they were applying for disclosure of all sales that had been made, and the freezing injunction would of course have the effect of shutting down the operation.

Now, it's, it's a bit unusual for, uh, an IP case to start off with a freezing injunction rather than just an injunction to stop the alleged infringement.

But in this case, we viewed it as more akin to a fraud case when you see those freezing injunctions.

Uh, LVMH's view was this was a, a essentially high volume illegal operation and should be treated as a fraud rather than as a, um, as an infringement.

So that's why they went down the freezing injunction route, but that's an interesting practice point for, um, future reference.

Um, to avoid tipping off the, uh, Ms. Aldridge and Rolo and to stop them transferring any assets they had retained elsewhere, the injunction application was made without notice to the other side, and that meant that LVMH had to give what's known as full and frank disclosure on pain of losing the injunction.

So those applications are high stress because you need to make sure that you have disclosed everything you should have disclosed, um, and you put the likely arguments that could have been made by the other side if they were represented and were there.

But ultimately, LVMH succeeded, and Rolo and Ms. Aldridge then effectively, after they were injuncted and all their assets were frozen, they effectively conceded liability for trademark infringement, uh, l- by allowing default judgment to be entered on the claim.

Now, that meant that it was accepted that at least hundreds of counterfeit products had been offered for sale and imported into the UK.

So all that remained in the case was to quantify the loss suffered by LVMH and its, uh, various fashion houses in a damages inquiry.

Now, that part of the case was handled by my instructing solicitor, Richard Ferguson, and it was agreed that it would be dealt with on the papers by the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court.

Now, importantly, that was because Ms. Aldridge and Rolo Fashions claim they had no money, couldn't afford proper legal representation, and wouldn't be able to, uh, fight a full open hearing of a damages inquiry.

And it's important context that this judgment comes out of a fairly rough and ready paper-based, uh, assessment, uh, and that's gonna be important when it's, uh, the principles in it are applied later on.