Agency - 1993

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This page lists 4 cases, and was prepared on 04 October 2008.

Chasen Ryder & Co -v- Hedges [1993] 1 EGLR 47; [1993] 39 EG 123
1993 CA Sir Donal Nicholls V-C, Staughton LJ	Agency, Contract	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The vendor first instructed the plaintiffs to sell his residential home. They introduced several people, but no offers were made. The vendor went to another firm of agents. An extended planning consent was obtained, and one of the original enquirers returned and evetually bought the property. The vendor paid the second agent only. The first agent sued, and the defendant now appealed. Held: The test of whether an estate agent can sue for having introduced a purchaser is whether he has introduced the purchaser to the purchase transaction, not merely to the property. The burden lay first on the agent to show that his introduction had been the effective cause of the purchase. The court might infer that causation from the introduction, but the defendant might show another effective casue of the sale. Here the first introduction had not produced a result, but the second did. The first agent was not the effective cause of the sale and was not to be paid.

First Energy (Uk) Ltd -v- Hungarian International Bank Ltd [1993] 2 Lloyds Rep 194
16 Apr 1993 CA Steyn LJ	Agency, Contract	Casemap 1 Citers
	A manager though he lacked actual authority to authorise and offer a particular loan facility to the plaintiff, still did so by sending him a letter of offer which he accepted. Held: Albeit the manager lacked actual authority to make the loan and that no other person in the bank had held him out as having such authority, by reason of his very position he was a person who would ordinarily have authority to communicate the decision of more senior members of the bank who were authorised to make and/or approve such a loan and the plaintiff was accordingly entitled to rely upon the offer he had received. Steyn LJ said that a "theme that runs through our law of contract is that the reasonable expectations of honest men must be protected. It is not a rule or a principle of law. It is the objective which has been and still is the principal moulding force of our law of contract. It affords no licence to a Judge to depart from binding precedent. On the other hand, if the prima facie solution to a problem runs counter to the reasonable expectations of honest men, this criterion sometimes requires a rigorous re-examination of the problem to ascertain whether the law does indeed compel demonstrable unfairness".

Arbuthnott -v- Feltrim; Deeny -v- Gooda Walker; Henderson -v- Merrett
14 Dec 1993 CA	Agency, Professional Negligence	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	Underwriters owe a professional duty of care to Lloyds names in underwriting, even though they were acting as agents.

Siu Yin Kwan and Another -v- Eastern Insurance Co Ltd [1994] 2 AC 199
16 Dec 1993 PC Lord Lloyd	Insurance, Agency, Commonwealth	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	Insurers are liable to undisclosed principals on an indemnity policy, provided it was made with the range of their authority. The claim arose out of the death of two seamen on their employers’ vessel but the employers were not named in the relevant policy. (Lord Lloyd) “There are two reasons why their Lordships prefer the decision in Mark Rowlands …. In the first place the words “event or events” in section 2, while apt to describe the loss of the vessel are hardly apt to describe … liability arising under the common law, as a consequence of the loss of the vessel. Secondly, section 2 must take colour from the short title and preamble to Section 1. By no stretch of the imagination could indemnity insurance be described as a “mischievous kind of gaming”. Their Lordships are entitled to give section 2 a meaning which corresponds with the obvious legislative intent.”
	Statute References omitted