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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  














Torts - Other - From: 1991 To: 1991

This page lists 10 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Femis Bank v Lazard [1991] Ch. 391
1991

Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson V-C
Defamation, Litigation Practice, Torts - Other
Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson V-C said: "However, in this case the plaintiffs rely on the decision . . in Gulf Oil (Great Britain) Ltd v. Page . . which shows that, where the cause of action is founded on conspiracy to injure, the court can grant an injunction restraining publication.
It is the plaintiffs' case here that they have an arguable case that the sole or paramount intention of Mr. Lazar and Cityguide operating in concert is to injure the plaintiffs . .
However, on the other side I must take account of the fact of the intemperate language such as I have quoted, the element of witchhunt which comes into the matter, the extreme broadcasting of these allegations. The manifest dislike which Mr. Lazar entertains for Mr. Singh may well have come – although of course I cannot tell at this stage – from a position which seems to have emerged towards the end of 1989 in which Mr.Lazar or those associated with him appear to have wished to obtain either a stake in or control of Femis. There are documents showing Mr.Lazar holding himself out as being in that position. Mr Singh in fact obtained control. In addition the unhappy episode in which Mr. Singh covertly joined Femis at a time when he was still ostensibly acting for Cityguide cannot have improved relations.
There are therefore substantial grounds on which it can be argued that there was a major malicious motive in Mr. Lazar's conduct. Though I have substantial doubts whether at trial the plaintiffs will establish that the sole or paramount purpose of what Mr Lazar did was simply to injure without lawful justification, I marginally reach the view that there is an arguable case on the point".
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 Banque Keyser Ullmann SA v Skandia (UK) Insurance Co Ltd; HL 1991 - [1991] 2 AC 249; [1990] 1 QB 665; [1990] 2 All ER 947; (1990) 6 ANZ Insurance Cases 60-987; [1990] 3 WLR 364
 
Royscot Trust Ltd v Rogerson [1991] 2 QB 297; [1991] EWCA Civ 12
1991


Damages, Torts - Other, Contract, Damages
Doyle -v- Olby (Ironmongers) Ltd was an appropriate way of assessing damages for an action under the Act, and damages are calculated on the basis of fraud.
A client misled into an investment is entitled to the measure of damages he would receive for a fraud.
Misrepresentation Act 1967 2(1)
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[ Bailii ]
 
IBL Ltd v Coussens [1991] 2 All ER 133
1991


Damages, Torts - Other
Flexibility in the date of breach rule applies in assessing damages for conversion.
1 Citers


 
East v Maurer [1991] 1 WLR 461; [1990] EWCA Civ 6; [1991] 2 All ER 733
1991
CA
Mustill LJ, Butler-Sloss LJ, Beldam LJ
Damages, Torts - Other
The plaintiffs had bought a hair dressing salon from the defendant, who continued to trade from another he owned, despite telling the plaintiffs that he intended not to. The plaintiffs lost business to the defendant. They invested to try to make a success of the business but eventually sold it at a loss. The defendant appealed against the award of damages for deceit. Held: The plaintiffs had established that they had suffered a loss due to the defendants' misrepresentation which arose from their inability to earn the profits in the business, and "I would therefore reject the submission . . that loss of profits is not a recoverable head of damage in cases of this kind." However the amount of damages was recalculated.
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[ Bailii ]
 
Kemp Properties (UK) Ltd v Dentsply Research and Development Corporation [1991] 2 EGLR 197
1991

Bingham LJ
Torts - Other, Damages
The measure of damages is the same as for fraudulent misrepresentation i.e. all loss caused by the plaintiff having been induced to enter into the contract.
Misrepresentation Act 1967 2(1)
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Lonrho plc v Fayed [1992] AC 448; Guardian, 28 June 1991
2 Jan 1991
HL
Lord Bridge
Torts - Other
In a conspiracy, the intent to injure need not be the primary intent, but there must be some intent which involves the conspiring parties directing their minds towards the victim or a category of persons which would include the victim as a target to be harmed. Judgment of the Court of Appeal reversed in part. Lord Bridge described the distinction between the two types of tortious conspiracy: "Where conspirators act with the predominant purpose of injuring the plaintiff and in fact inflict damage on him, but do nothing which would have been actionable if done by an individual acting alone, it is in the fact of their concerted action for that illegitimate purpose that the law, however anomalous it may now seem, finds a sufficient ground to condemn their action as illegal and tortious. But when conspirators intentionally injure the plaintiff and use unlawful means to do so, it is no defence for them to show that their primary purpose was to further or protect their own interests; it is sufficient to make their action tortious that the means used were unlawful."
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 Lunt v Liverpool City Justices; CA 5-Mar-1991 - Unreported, 5th March 1991
 
Lonhro plc v Fayed [1990] AC 479; Guardian, 28 June 1991; [1991] 3 All ER 303
28 Jun 1991
HL

Torts - Other, Company
The parties had competed in bidding to acquire a public company. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant had used a fraudulent misrepresentation to the Secretary of State to achieve an advantage. Held: To establish the tort of conspiracy to injure, it was sufficient that the conspirators intentionally caused injury to the plaintiff, and that they had used unlawful means to do so. It was not a defence to show that their predominant purpose was to protect their own interests.
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Regina v Deputy Governor of Parkhurst Prison, Ex parte Hague, Weldon v Home Office [1992] 1 AC 58; Times, 25 July 1991; [1991] 3 All ER 733; [1990] UKHL 8; [1991] 3 WLR 340; [1992] COD 69; (1993) 5 Admin LR 425; [1991] UKHL 13; [1991] BCC 713; 1991 SLT 523; 1991 SC (HL) 22
24 Jul 1991
HL
Lord Bridge of Harwich, Lord Ackner, Lord Goff of Chieveley, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, Lord Lowry
Prisons, Torts - Other
The prisoner challenged the decision to place him in segregation under Prison Rule 43. Under rule 43(1) the initial power to segregate was given to "the governor". The case arose from the fact that the governor of one prison had purported to authorise the segregation of a prisoner on his arrival at another prison to which he was being transferred, as required by an instruction issued by the Home Office. The prisoner's continued segregation at his new prison, after the initial period of segregation expired, was then automatically authorised by the regional director of prisons on behalf of the Secretary of State, in accordance with the same instruction. Held: The House characterised the Prison Rules as regulatory in character, to the extent that they dealt with the management, treatment and control of prisoners.
A prisoner "is lawfully committed to a prison and while there is subject to the Prison Act 1953 and the Prison Rules 1954. His whole life is regulated by the regime. He has no freedom to do what he wants, when he wants. His liberty to do anything is governed by the prison regime. Placing Weldon in a strip cell and segregating Hague altered the conditions under which they were detained but did not deprive them of any liberty which they had not already lost when initially confined." A person who has been deprived of his liberty in pursuance of a lawful power to detain cannot through the medium of the tort of false imprisonment complain about the conditions in which he is detained, at least by those who are lawfully detaining him, though unauthorised persons, such as other prisoners, might indeed be guilty of false imprisonment if they confined another prisoner within the prison. Whether a statutory duty gives rise to a private cause of action is a question of construction of the statute. When justifying a detention, the issue of detention must be considered and determined before one can turn to the issue of justification.
As to an allegation of novus actus interveniens, Lord Bingham emphasised that the duty was a duty to take reasonable care and not to guarantee that a fatality did not occur: "Since an act of self-destruction by the deceased was the very risk against which the defendant was bound in law to take reasonable precautions, I cannot see how that act can be regarded as a novus actus. So to hold would be to deprive the duty of meaningful content. This was, after all, the very thing against which the defendant was duty- bound to take precautions. It can make no difference that the deceased was mentally "normal" (assuming he was), since it is not suggested that the defendant's duty was owed only to the abnormal. The suicide of the deceased cannot in my view be regarded as breaking the chain of causation." and "If the defendant owed the deceased a duty of care despite the fact that the deceased was of sound mind, then it again seems to me to empty that duty of meaningful content if any claim based on breach of the duty is inevitably defeated by a defence of volenti."
Lord Bridge of Harwich said that the tort of false imprisonment has two ingredients: the fact of imprisonment and the absence of lawful authority to justify it.
Prison Act 1953 12 13 - Prison Rules 1964 43
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