Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:50

From: Jason Neyers

Subject: Unlawful means conspiracy

Dear Colleagues:

Although most of the decision is not in the least convincing, I found Lord Neuberger's argument that unlawful means conspiracy collapses into Quinn v Leathem conspiracy very interesting (i.e. one cannot have a legitimate purpose in making money through crime). It gives interesting ammunition to those who take an abuse of rights view of conspiracy.

I also found it interesting that Lord Neuberger suggests that the harm only has to be reasonably foreseeable to be recoverable, which suggests that the 'crime creates rights public or private rights' justification for the economic torts might work as well.

In response to the question which crimes count, why not something along the lines of only crimes that originate in common law (i.e. the most fundamental), as the answer?

Cheers,

Jason Neyers
Associate Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
University of Western Ontario
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435

Anthony de Garr Robinson wrote:

Subscribers may be interested to know that the House of Lords judgment in Total is out.

The Lords have elected against conceptual simplicity: The unlawful means necessary for unlawful means conspiracy are very different from the unlawful means for causing loss by unlawful means. Some crimes can constitute unlawful means for the former, whereas OBG tells us that only actionable civil wrongs count as unlawful means for the latter.

The next question is: how do you distinguish between crimes that count for conspiracy (cheating the Revenue) and crimes that do not (speeding pizza delivery motorcyclists).

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