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Conspiracy: a wide ranging tort

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29 May 2008 / Gregory Mitchell
Issue: 7323 / Categories: Features , Regulatory , Constitutional law , Commercial
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Gregory Mitchell QC examines the ambit of the tort of conspiracy following a recent House of Lords' case

Economic tort used to be a legal backwater, in which interlocutory skirmishes against trade unions (Thomson v Deakin [1952] Ch 646, [1952] 2 All ER 361; Merkur Island Corp v Laughton [1983] 2 AC 570, [1983] 2 All ER 189), and a small number of disparate cases, such as the long running dispute over the acquisition of the House of Fraser (Lonrho v Fayed [1992] 1 AC 448, [1991] 3 All ER 303), were fought out, with occasional decisions by the House of Lords (HL). Economic tort has now been propelled into the forefront of commercial litigation as shown by the plethora of recent cases in the HL and in the Court of Appeal (CA).

This increase in importance of economic tort in commercial litigation is driven by at least two factors:

  •   
    (i)     litigators are increasingly testing the boundaries
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