Non-contractual liability

A business deals with far more people than it has contracts with. Neighbours hear its machines, passers-by walk under its scaffolding, people it has never met use the products its customers resell, and competitors are affected by what it says in public. When one of them suffers harm, there is no contract to limit the claim, no agreed cap and no chosen court, only the general law applied after the event. A business that has never mapped this exposure usually meets it for the first time as a summons.

Non-contractual liability covers the harm a business causes to people outside its contracts and the harm they cause to it, whether a claim has to be defended, brought, or anticipated in an audit of the activities that create it:

• the rules on liability for defective products, for everyone in the chain from manufacturer to seller;
• the rules on nuisance between neighbours — noise, dust, smells and disturbance beyond what neighbours are expected to tolerate;
• the rules on harm to the environment, and on who bears the cost of cleaning up contamination;
• the rules on liability for inaccurate information, advice or references relied on by people who were not your clients;
• the rules on the personal liability of directors and managers towards third parties;
• the rules on whether a party bound by a contract may still bring a non-contractual claim, and on the choice between the two routes;
• the rules on several parties answering for the same harm, and on recovering a share from the others once one has paid;
• the rules on the defences open to a business accused of causing harm — an unforeseeable event, the act of a third party, a legal duty to act;
• the rules on unfair conduct towards competitors, and on the harm caused by disparagement or imitation outside any contract.

Our lawyers can support you with this.