The recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Capita Alternative Fund Services (Guernsey) Ltd v Drivers Jonas considered a peculiar set of circumstances in which the incidence of tax can be factored in when computing the damages suffered by a commercial party. The House of Lords had considered this question almost 60 years ago in BTC v Gourley, and laid down a set of guidelines to determine...
Wrotham Park and the scope of the “hypothetical negotiation” measure of damages
Perhaps the most obvious instance of the sophistication of English commercial law is the range of remedies it has, depending on the precise nature of and tailored to each cause of action. The most common remedy is, of course, compensation for loss, which attempts to place the claimant in the position in which he would have been had the term (in the case of contract) not been breached; an award of...
The Court of Appeal on the illegality defence
The role of illegality as a defence to a claim for damages has always been the subject of much debate. There are two principal rationales that can be proposed for illegality being a defence: (a) that the claimant cannot be allowed to rely on his illegal conduct (reliance-based rationale); and (b) that allowing the claim will result in stultifying the law which rendered the claimant’s conduct...
Court of Appeal on the Award of Damages
A recent decision of the UK Court of Appeal revisits the issue of alternative remedies, one on which there has been significant academic debate. An earlier post discussed the issue of concurrent liability in contract and tort, where the Court of Appeal had clarified some doubts in the area. However, the issue in Ramzan v Brookwide was different- not so much the existence and scope of different...
The Supreme Court in BSNL v Reliance: Penalty and Liquidated Damages
The complexity of the distinction between penalties and liquidated damages in English law is amply borne out by the fact that even McGregor’s remarkably concise and insightful account is forced to begin with a seventeenth century statute (18th edition, ¶¶13.001 onwards). For an elaborate account of the law, interested readers may refer to Chitty on Contracts (30th edition, ¶ 26-010 onwards)...
Recent Comments