The singer Johanna Wagner was engaged by Benjamin Lumley to sing exclusively at Her Majesty's Theatre for three months.

Frederick Gye, who ran Covent Garden Theatre, induced her to break her contract with Mr. Lumley by promising to pay her more.

Although an injunction was issued to prevent her singing at Covent Garden, Gye persuaded her to disregard it.

He observed that although the general law is there is no action, by then it had become clear that a claim lay for wrongfully and maliciously enticing a person to break their contract with another.

‘Whatever may have been the origin or foundation of the law as to enticing of servants, and whether it be, as contended by the plaintiff, an instance and branch of a wider rule, or whether it be, as contended by the defendant, an anomaly and an exception from the general rule of law on such subjects, it must now be considered clear law that a person who wrongfully and maliciously, or, which is the same thing, with notice, interrupts the relation subsisting between master and servant... commits a wrongful act for which he is responsible at law.Wightman J and Erle J concurred.