In re Horsley and Weight Ltd: CA 1892

The liquidator sought to set aside a pension policy acquired by the company for the benefit of a retiring director. The question was whether the decision to acquire the pension had been ratified by the shareholders.
Held: There had been no misfeasance by the directors.
A company is bound in a matter which is intra vires the company by the unanimous agreement of its members, even where that agreement is given informally and without any meeting.
Templeman LJ said: ‘There could have been gross negligence, amounting to misfeasance. If the company could not afford to pay out andpound;10,000 and was doubtfully solvent so that the expenditure threatened the continued existence of the company, the directors ought to have known the facts and ought at any rate to have postponed the grant of the pension until the financial position of the company was assured.’
Cumming-Bruce LJ referred to a suspicion that at the time of the decision the company was not in a position to pay the money to the respondent. But that evidence ‘fell far short of proof that the directors should at the time have appreciated that the payment was likely to cause loss to the creditors’.
Buckley LJ emphasised that the good faith of the directors was not questioned and there was no suggestion that they had failed to apply their minds honestly to the question whether the decision was a fair and proper thing for the company to do in the light of the company’s financial state as known to them at the time.

Templeman, Cumming-Bruce LJ
[1982] Ch 442, [1982] 3 WLR 431, [1982] 3 All ER 1045
England and Wales

Company, Insolvency

Leading Case

Updated: 11 November 2021; Ref: scu.570504