Rick Bigwood

Pre-contractual misrepresentation and the limits of the principle in With v. O'Flanagan

THE English Court of Appeal decided With v. O’Flanagan in 1936. The case concerns the interesting phenomenon of “supervening falsification” within the law of pre-contractual misrepresentation. Such a phenomenon occurs when a representation, though perfectly true when made, and unknown to representee throughout, has nevertheless become substantially false by the time it induces the representee to enter into the contract in question. The problem of supervening falsification potentially arises whenever there is an (appreciable) interval of time between the moment when a representation is made and the time when the party to whom it was made (reasonably) altered his position on the faith of it.

Undue Influence in the House of Lords: Principles and Proof

that his subsequent difficulties in finding another job are attributable to his having worked for BCCI is however, extremely speculative. ... Four of the [unsuccessful] cases tried by Lightman J appear to have concerned employees who were dismissed by the liquidators when the bank collapsed in 1991. By contrast, Mr Naeem and the others [were] made redundant in 1990. ... The present position is that this vastly expensive litigation, which has been twice to the House of Lords and given rise to two lengthy trials ... has produced benefits for no one except the lawyers involved and has been at the expense, not of the fraudulent villains but of the public and the unfortunate creditors of BCCI.59