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...
Parent Company’s duty to employees of its Subsidiary
In an interesting judgment delivered earlier this month, Chandler v. Cape Plc. [2011] EWHC 951 (dt. 14/4/2011), it has been held that a parent company owes a duty of care to employees of its subsidiary. The decision contains a detailed analysis of the scope of the duty of care in such situations; and provides some indication that the existence of the corporate veil between the parent and its...
Court of Appeal on Concurrent Liability
Earlier this year, the UK Court of Appeal was called on to consider an important question dealing with concurrent liability in contract and tort. The facts in Robinson v. Jones involved the defective construction of a house by a builder, which caused economic loss to the purchaser. However, the contractual remedy was barred by limitation. As a result, the purchaser sought to argue that he had a...
Exclusion of Jurisdiction of Civil Courts under the SEBI Act
Legally India has made available certain expert witness statements filed before US Courts in the class action litigation concerning Satyam, which was recently settled. One of the witness statements, by Mr. Sandeep Parekh, makes an interesting point; but I am not entirely sure of the tenability in law of that point. Mr. Parekh’s declaration / statement as an expert witness is available here...
The Red Jaguar: Apparent Authority and Tortious Liability
Ironically, many significant propositions in private law have been advanced in the course of a court’s attempt to unravel a transaction or scheme engineered by a rogue with considerable ingenuity – so much so that judges not infrequently ask the question “which of two innocent parties should bear the loss caused by a rogue” (See, for example, Re Jones [1926] All ER Rep 36). The immediate context...
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