Bank references: UK Supreme Court rules on liability to an undisclosed principal
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.
In this article, Michael Brown, Matthew Pack and Louise Lanzkron analyse the implications of a recent UK Supreme Court decision on liability to an undisclosed principal
While acknowledging that the principle established in Hedley Byrne v Heller is capable of incremental development, the Supreme Court refused to extend it to a case where a bank provided a reference to an agent and the bank had no knowledge of that agent’s undisclosed principal ([1964] AC 465; Banca Nazionale del Lavoro SpA v Playboy Club London Limited and others [2018] UKSC 43). As a result, the bank was not liable to the undisclosed principal for negligent misstatement in tort.
This article first appeared in the September 2018 issue of PLC Magazine http://uk.practicallaw.com/resources/uk-publications/plc-magazine
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