Vol 21 (2024) - Issue 4

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Denaxe Limited

Synopsis
The claimants appealed against a decision that a claim against Court-appointed receivers for (inter alia) breach of their common law duty to obtain the best price reasonably obtainable upon the sale of certain assets could not be brought on grounds of immunity and abuse of process. The appeal was refused.
The case is the first to consider a challenge to a transaction by receivers which had itself received Court approval. The authorities were of limited help when determining the scope of the immunity enjoyed by the receivers as a result of the Court’s approval of the transaction. Immunity is not an established principle of English commercial law; rather, the principles of law which have the effect of conferring immunity are issue estoppel and abuse of process. The ‘immunity’ arising from issue estoppel and/or abuse of process is narrow and fact-specific. In this case, questions of immunity and issue estoppel arising should not have been considered separately; they were one and the same question. Even if the instant case did not give rise to an issue estoppel, however, the Court had been correct to consider the claim a Henderson v Henderson abuse of process.
Snowden LJ gave the leading judgment with which Falk LJ and Asplin LJ agreed.