Roderick Bagshaw Mansfield College Michaelmas 2000
Economic Torts – Lecture 6		Economic Torts – Loose Ends & Conclusions
***	a. A European Future? Competition Act 1998			***
	EC Article 81, anti-competitive agreements - “have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the common market” EC Article 82, abuse of a dominant position in a market
***	b. Statutory Trade Dispute Immunity			***
Why?	Taff Vale Ry Co. v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants [1901] AC 426; S’th Wales Miners’ Federation v Glamorgan Coal Co [1905] AC 239 ® Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992
???	® When will the Trade Union be liable? ss 20, 21 (s 23 limits damages)
	® Principal statutory immunity: s. 219 (1) An act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute is not actionable in tort on the ground only - (a) that it induces another person to break a contract or interferes or induces another person to interfere with its performance, or (b) that it consists in his threatening that a contract (whether one to which he is a party or not) will be broken or its performance interfered with, or that he will induce another person to break a contract or interfere with its performance. (2) An agreement or combination by two or more persons to do or procure the doing of an act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute is not actionable in tort if the act is one which if done without any such agreement would not be actionable in tort. ® s. 244 “trade dispute” (political concerns: Universe Tankships v ITWF [1983] 1 AC 366, Wandsworth LBC v Nat’l Association of Schoolmasters [1994] ICR 81) ® s. 220 “lawful picketing” ® Forbidden purposes: s. 222 (enforcement of TU membership), s. 223 (dismissal for unofficial action), s. 224 (secondary action), s. 225 (union-only contracts) ® Good procedure: s. 226(1) (ballots), s. 234A(1) (notice)
***	c. Remedies			***
	Compensatory damages (incl. for aggravation): Rookes v. Barnard [1964] AC 1129, Lord Devlin, “There may be malevolence or spite or the manner of committing the wrong may be such as to injure the plaintiff’s proper feelings of dignity and pride. These are matters which the jury [now, judge] can take into account in assessing the appropriate compensation.” Exemplary damages: AB v. South West Water Services Ltd [1993] QB 507 (But cf Law Com 247 (1997)) Injunctions, incl. quia timet Orders to correct: Esso v. Kingswood Motors Ltd [1974] QB 142
	*SUMMARY of SIX HOURS
Lecture 1	Torts are compromises. There may be good reasons for complexity.			****
Lecture 2	Contracts are special – but this causes an awkward division between the tort of procuring breach of contract and indirect interference with contractual interests (the latter is undoubtedly part of the genus tort)			***
Lectures 3/ 4	The genus tort may not solve all our problems, indeed it may be inherently unstable (the relativity of ‘unlawful means’)			**
Lecture 5	There is a role for unlawful means conspiracy outside the genus tort The ‘magic of plurality’ is unconvincing, but is the anomaly the existence of Quinn v. Leathem conspiracy or the absence of a tort covering individuals with disproportionate power?			*
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***	d. Secondary Liability in the Civil Law
	Philip Sales (1990) 49 CLJ 491
	Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland NV v. ECGD [2000] 1 AC 486