From: James Lee <james.lee@kcl.ac.uk>

Sent: Monday 24 November 2025 14:45

To: obligations

Subject: Fiduciaries, Remedies and the Supreme Court (Encore, Encore)

Dear Colleagues,

Fans of the UK Supreme Court's current Fiduciary Era will be interested to see yet another decision this year on liabilities in equity, in Mitchell v Al Jaber [2025] UKSC 43 https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/judgments/uksc-2024-0075. There is material from a range of jurisdictions considered by the Justices. The Court upholds the finding that the defendant Sheikh, who had intermeddled with the property of the company despite not having authority to enter into transactions on its behalf, was an ad hoc fiduciary. The treatment of this point is of note because it follows so soon after Hopcraft, the car finance decision from earlier this year, which seemed to narrow the scope for ad hoc fiduciary relationships. The Court also concludes that it is possible for the act that generates the duty in such cases also to amount to a breach of the duty. There is then lengthy discussion about how to calculate loss in such cases, with the date of assessment, counterfactuals, chains of causation and intervening & supervening causes all examined. The Sheikh's argument that the loss to the company was zero (for various reasons) was rejected by the Supreme Court.

Best wishes,

James

--

James Lee

Professor of English Law 

The Dickson Poon School of Law

Somerset House East Wing

King's College London

Strand

London WC2R 2LS

E-mail: james.lee@kcl.ac.uk

My Inaugural Lecture, Pure Imagination: Stories, Institutions and Law Reform , will be held at 6pm on Monday 17th November, at King s College London. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/inaugural-lecture-with-professor-james-lee

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