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08 November 2018 / Nicole Finlayson , Charlotte Hill
Issue: 7816 / Categories: Features , Commercial
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Who’s liable?

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Two out of three: the Court of Appeal rules in favour of a multinational parent company…again. Nicole Finlayson & Charlotte Hill report

The Court of Appeal has recently ruled for the second time—in AAA & others v Unilever Plc and Unilever Tea Kenya Limited [2018] EWCA Civ 1532 — that an English multinational parent company cannot be held liable for acts of its foreign-registered subsidiary.

This is the third judgment handed down in the past 12 months on this subject, with two out of the three sets of claimants failing to convince the Court of Appeal either that a duty of care should be imposed on the parent company, or that (consequently) the English courts should have jurisdiction. In each case ( Lungowe v Vedanta Resources Plc [2017] EWCA Civ 1528 ; Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell Plc [2018] EWCA Civ 191; and now Unilever ), the Court of Appeal carried out a detailed examination of the factual evidence including, critically, the degree of control that the parent company had over the acts and omissions of its

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