Loss of chance

Normans Bay Ltd (formerly Illingworth Morris Ltd) v Coudert Brothers (a firm) CA TLR 24 March

The claimant claimed damages from the defendant, its solicitor, arising out of its lost investment in a Russian firm where the Russian court declared invalid its tender offering a five-year investment period when a maximum three-year term had been decreed by the Government. It based its claim for damages on loss of chance. In relation to the assessment of the chance, the defendant alleged that the transaction had failed for a cause independent of the pleaded negligence, namely its own subsequent failure to obtain anti-monopoly permission, because the intervening act gave rise to a separate cause of action in respect of which the limitation period had expired.