Cases - Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland v Export Credits

Record details

Name

Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland v Export Credits

Date

[2000]

Citation

AC 486

Keywords

Contract administration

Summary

An employer is only liable for the wrongful acts of his employee, if those wrongful acts are committed during the course of the employee's employment. An employer should not be liable for acts of the servant or agent that are not performed within the course of the servant's employment or the agent's authority.

Thus, in this case, a government agency was held not to be liable to the claimant bank for a fraudulent transaction perpetrated by its employee, because such fraud was outside the course of the latter's employment.

Applying this principle to a construction context, the employer would not be liable to a third party for the default of his contractor or contract administrator if that default was not committed in the course of the contractor's employment or within the bounds of the contract administrator's authority as the employer's agent.