Responsibility for losses: liability of professional advisers
Written By
Dispute Resolution Knowledge & Development Lawyer
UK
I am the knowledge and development lawyer in our London International Dispute Resolution team. I play a key role in keeping my colleagues updated so that they are at the forefront of legal developments, trends and case law in the litigation and international arbitration arenas for the benefit of our clients.
There have been a number of claims going through the English courts seeking damages in relation to losses sustained from business decisions taken before the 2008 financial crisis which resulted in losses during that period. In the recent decision of Manchester Building Society v Grant Thornton, the High Court considered the position of a firm of accountants that had accepted that it had a duty of care to the claimant for audit work and that it had breached that duty ([2018] EWHC 963 (Comm)).
The case illustrates the difficulties in assessing whether a particular loss is within the adviser’s scope of duty, and many of these cases will turn entirely on their facts.
This article first appeared in the June 2018 issue of PLC Magazine
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