Lloyds Bank v Independent Insurance
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The Jolly Contrarian Law Reports
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Lloyds Bank v Independent Insurance [1998] EWCACiv 1853
A word about pronouns
A Court of Appeal judge is undoubtedly a guardian of the Queen’s English, and far be it from this snitty little rogue to have an opinion (I mean, can you imagine?), but Lord Justice Waller’s habit of referring to a corporation as if it were[1] a crowd, and therefore a plural is an abomination.
It is galling enough when members of the internet do this, to their favourite foopball teams or pop bands, where there is at least an argument, however misguided, that the whole is no more than the sum of its members, but a corporation, under his honour’s own freaking law, is its own legal personality. It is — must be, at a profoundly ontological level — a singular entity.
And nor can this be put down to wokeness: firstly, it was 1998, so everyone was racist, misogynist and cis-biased etc. etc. etc. — i.e., no-one was woke, and secondly, in any case, “bank” takes the neuter pronoun it, so would have been perfectly woke in the singular anyway.
I have re-rendered the pronouns as they should be.[2]
Right.
Issue
LLoyds transferred money into Independent’s account at the Royal Bank of Scotland by mistake. Independent argued that LLoyds made the transfer on behalf of its customer WFL, with its authority, to discharge WFL’s debt that was due to Independent.
At first instance, the court held that WF had not authorised the transfer. Independent appealed, arguing that LLoyds was authorised, or that it was ostensibly authorised to transfer the money, so the payment discharged WF’s debt to Independent, thus providing a defence to LLoyds’ claim restitution. The Bank seek to uphold the judge's findings in relation to authority but in the alternative seeks to argue that even if authorised LLoyds were entitled to succeed on their restitutionary claim.
See also
References
- ↑ Note: subjunctive!
- ↑ Yes: like most commercials lawyers I have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but unusually, also I have appalling attention to detail. This is a cross I have had to bear my whole life.