Dr Stefan Lo Cited by UK Supreme Court

Congratulations to Dr Stefan Lo whose articles (“Liabilities of Directors as Joint Tortfeasors” [2009] Journal of Business Law 109 and “Dis-attribution Fallacy and Directors’ Tort Liabilities” (2016) 30 Australian Journal of Corporate Law 215) were cited with approval by the UK Supreme Court in Lifestyle Equities CV v Ahmed [2025] AC 1, [2024] UKSC 17. The case concerned the issue of the circumstances in which a director of a company may be liable as an accessory in tort where the company is the main tortfeasor. A main thesis of the above articles from Dr Lo is that directors do not hold any special position by reason of being a director and that they, similar to employees or agents of a company, may be a joint tortfeasor with the company pursuant to the general principles of accessory liability and joint tortfeasors in tort law. Lord Leggatt SC agreed with this view in handing down his judgment (with which the other members of the Supreme Court agreed). Lord Leggatt SC (at para 35) adopted the terminology of “dis-attribution fallacy” as coined by Dr Lo (also referred to as a “dis-attribution heresy” by Campbell and Armour) – namely that it is a fallacy to suppose that attribution of acts of a director to a company necessarily results in dis-attribution of those acts from the director for all legal purposes. A number of Australian decisions have, in Dr Lo’s views, committed this fallacy. Lord Leggatt cited Dr Lo’s research on the Australian position (at para 71) and agreed with the view asserted by Dr Lo that to limit directors’ personal liabilities due to their acts being regarded as the company’s is incorrect. Earlier English cases had been moving towards this position as favoured by Dr Lo but there was also a suggestion by the English Court of Appeal that there remains a “constitutional exception” under which directors cannot be liable as joint tortfeasor with the company merely where their authorisation of the tortious act is done via their constitutional role in voting at a board meeting (MCA Records Inc v Charly Records Ltd (No.5) [2002] BCC 650, [2001] EWCA Civ 1441). Dr Lo argued that any such exception that effectively provides a ”safe harbour” for directors is inappropriate as a matter of both principle and policy. Lord Legatt SC agreed (at para 81).

Keith Hotten's Co-Authored 'Hong Kong Family Court Practice' Cited by the Court of First Instance

Congratulations to Keith Hotten whose co-authored practitioners' text, Hong Kong Family Court Practice, 2nd edn, was cited with approval by the Court of First Instance in the case, C v N (unreported, HCMP154/2016, 16 March 2016).  Madam Justice Au-Yeung cited the text for its statement of the modified principles of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction applicable to the case (see [15]).  The case concerned a mother who had taken her two children from Taiwan, where they resided with their father, to Hong Kong.  The father brought the application for custody and return of the children to Taiwan.  Dr Hotten's text was published in June 2015 by LexisNexis Butterworths.  More recently, the text was cited in DCB v AB (unreported, HCMP 2173/2014, 28 July 2017) fn 4.

New Book: Personal Injury Tables Hong Kong 2016 (Sweet & Maxwell)

Personal Injury Tables Hong Kong 2016: Tables for the Calculation of Damages, 4th edn

Neville Sarony, Wai-sum Chan, Felix WH Chan, Johnny SH Li

Sweet and Maxwell, April 2016

Description: Continually cited in Hong Kong Courts as the “Chan Tables”, Personal Injury Tables Hong Kong 2016 updates and revises the essential reference information for calculating damages in personal injury and fatal accident cases. The 2016 edition has been fully updated to take into account revised Hong Kong mortality projections by the Census and Statistics Department (Hong Kong Population Projections 2015–2064), under which there is an increase in life expectancy. Evaluating damages is no longer a time-consuming and challenging task. Its comprehensive contents include Hong Kong actuarial tables for the calculation of: 

• Inflationary rates for adjusting PSLA
• Wage statistics
• Retail price indices

“The law, like life, moves on. Fresh developments occur. With them, there arise new needs to be met. So the tools by which justice according to law is delivered effectively must be kept in good repair, and upgraded from time to time. That is why the latest edition of this publication has been brought out. This edition will, I am fully confident, continue to provide the valuable service rendered by the previous one. It is the product of a lot of hard work on the part of many persons. Readers will doubtless wish to join me in thanking them one and all.” 

      Kemal Bokhary, Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal, March 2016

About the Authors: Felix W H Chan is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong. Neville Sarony QC, SC is a respected and experienced personal injury practitioner in Hong Kong. Wai-Sum Chan is a Professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Johnny SH Li holds the Fairfax Chair in Risk Management at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

   Click here to order the book. 

Marcelo Thompson Cited by Brazil's Apex Court

Congratulations to Marcelo Thompson whose article ("The Democracy of FLOSS: Software Procurement under the Democratic Principle" (2008) 5 U. Ottawa L & Tech J 79) was cited with approval by the Brazilian Supreme Court ("Supremo Tribunal Federal"), the apex court in constitutional matters.  The case concerned the abstract judicial review of primary legislation from the state of Rio Grande do Sul establishing a system of preference for open source software (over "proprietary" software) in public procurement.  The Court upheld the constitutionality of the law which had been found unconstitutional in an interlocutory decision of the Court.  The decision forecloses the possibility of software companies imposing ex-ante designed end-user license agreements on the government.  The Court's judgment (dated 9 April 2015) in Portuguese can be downloaded here.