(back to preceding text)

    23.  Lord Hewart CJ held Dunlop liable. He referred to the dicta of Lords Macnaghten and Lindley in Quinn v Leathem [1901] AC 495, which I have already cited, and said, at p 377:

"In [my] opinion the defendants…knowingly committed a violation of the ARM company's legal rights by interfering, without any justification whatever, with the contractual relations existing between them and the GWK company and [I think] that the defendants so interfered with the intention of damaging the ARM company and that the company [has] been thereby damnified."

    24.  The case is a good example of intentionally causing loss by unlawful means. There was a finding of an intention to damage the ARM company (as a means of advancing the interests of the Dunlop company, but more of that later) and although there is no express reference to unlawful means in the passage I have cited, it is implied both by the reference to Lord Lindley's statement of principle and the separate finding of trespass to the goods of the GWK company.

    25.  Lord Hewart, however, made no reference to the tort of causing loss by unlawful means, possibly because the only form in which it was then recognised in the text books was Salmond's tort of intimidation. GWK Ltd v Dunlop Rubber Co Ltd was clearly not a case of intimidation. Dunlop had not threatened anyone but had achieved its ends more directly by a trespass against the property of the GWK company. It had nevertheless interfered with the freedom of the ARM company to fit its vehicles with tyres in accordance with its agreement with GWK. Nowadays we would not regard the fact that this was achieved by direct action rather than threats as making any difference: in both cases, intended loss is caused by unlawful means used against a third party. But Lord Hewart looked for a different pigeon hole and the way he formulated his reasons ("committed a violation of the ARM company's legal rights by interfering…with the contractual relations existing between them and the GWK company") shows that he found it in Lord Lindley's extended definition of the Lumley v Gye tort. As Sir Jeremy Lever QC pointed out in an elegant essay written nearly 50 years ago, before Rookes v. Barnard and Stratford v. Lindley, this analysis is unsatisfactory because it "ignores the importance of the means employed and over-emphasises the interest of the victim which is affected": see Means, Motives and Interests in the Law of Torts, in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (ed Guest (1961) at p 53).

    26.  The law was analysed in great depth by the Court of Appeal in DC Thomson & Co Ltd v Deakin [1952] Ch 646, in which argument by eminent counsel extended over nine days. The judgment of Jenkins LJ in particular has directed the course of the law ever since. He fully adopted the theory, originating with Lord Lindley in Quinn v Leathem and supported (possibly unintentionally) by Lord Macnaghten's dictum in the same case, that the principle of Lumley v Gye extended to all interference with contractual relations by unlawful means. "Direct persuasion or procurement or inducement applied by the third party to the contract breaker" was "regarded as a wrongful act in itself" and constituted the "primary form" of the tort: see p 694. But other forms of interference with contracts by unlawful means, such as GWK Ltd v Dunlop Rubber Co Ltd (1926) 42 TLR 376 ("a striking example") came within the same tort. From the dicta of Lord Macnaghten and Lord Lindley in Quinn v Leathem Jenkins LJ (at p 693) deduced two propositions:

"First…there may…be an actionable interference with contractual rights where other means of interference than persuasion or procurement or inducement, in the sense of influence of one kind or another brought to bear on the mind of the contract breaker to cause him to break his contract, are used by the interferer; but, secondly, that (apart from conspiracy to injure, which, as I have said, is not in question so far as this motion is concerned) acts of a third party lawful in themselves do not constitute an actionable interference with contractual rights merely because they bring about a breach of contract, even if they were done with the object and intention of bringing about such breach."

    27.  The unified theory thus treated procuring breach of contract, the old Lumley v Gye tort, as one species of a more general tort of actionable interference with contractual rights.

    28.  My Lords, I think that one reason why the Court of Appeal in DC Thomson & Co Ltd v Deakin [1952] Ch 646 adopted the unified theory was that there was an inadequate appreciation at that time of the scope, possibly even the existence, of the tort of causing loss by unlawful means. The reasoning of the Court of Appeal proceeded on the footing that no such tort existed. On that assumption, there was clearly a compelling case for creating a cause of action to cover cases in which the defendant used unlawful means to cause damage by interfering with the performance of a contract without any voluntary or even compelled participation on the part of the contracting party. As Evershed MR put it (at pp 677-678):

"It was suggested in the course of argument by Sir Frank Soskice and by Mr. Lindner, that the tort must still be properly confined to such direct intervention, that is, to cases where the intervener or persuader uses by personal intervention persuasion on the mind of one of the parties to the contract so as to procure that party to break it. I am unable to agree that any such limitation is logical, rational or part of our law. In such cases where the intervener (if I may call him such) does so directly act upon the mind of a party to the contract as to cause him to break it, the result is, for practical purposes, as though in substance he, the intervener, is breaking the contract, although he in not a party to it…At any rate, it is clear that, when there is such a direct intervention by the intervener, the intervention itself is thereby considered wrongful. I cannot think that the result is any different if the intervener, instead of so acting upon the mind of the contracting party himself, by some other act, tortious in itself, prevents the contracting party from performing the bargain. A simple case is where the intervener, for example, physically detains the contracting party so that the contracting party is rendered unable by the detention to perform the contract."

    29.  The Court of Appeal thought that the only way to give a remedy in such cases was by an extension of Lumley v Gye along the lines proposed by Lord Lindley. Today one can see that an alternative analysis was available: that the person who physically detained the contracting party would indeed incur liability, but not accessory liability under the principle in Lumley v Gye. It would be primary liability for intentionally causing loss by unlawfully interfering with the liberty of a third party, under the principle derived from Garret v Taylor and Tarleton v M'Gawley.

    30.  My Lords, I do not wish to exaggerate the difficulties which have arisen from the adoption of the unified theory. To some extent it is a matter of nomenclature. If, as Jenkins LJ made clear, liability outside the primary form of the tort requires the use of unlawful means, does it matter whether the tort is classified as causing loss by unlawful means or an extension of Lumley v Gye? In most cases, the question of taxonomy will make no difference. It is not easy to point to cases which were wrongly decided because the court had adopted the unified theory rather than the two-tort analysis of Allen v Flood.

    31.  Is there something to be said in principle for a unified theory? Tony Weir, in the Clarendon Law Lectures to which I have referred, makes a bravura case for one. Not, it is true, the version adopted in DC Thomson v Deakin, which he thinks paid too much attention to the contractual nature of the claimant's rights. Weir would prefer Lumley v Gye to be swallowed up by the tort of intentionally causing loss by unlawful means, treating the "seduction" of the contracting party as a species of unlawful means and not distinguishing between interference with contractual rights and damage to economic expectations. The example of what Lord Atkin achieved for negligence in Donogue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 always beckons (see Weir at p. 25). But this too is a form of seduction which may lure writers onto the rocks.

    32.  In my opinion the principle of accessory liability for breach of contract, the first of Lord Watson's principles of liability for the act of another in Allen v Flood, cannot be subsumed in the tort of causing loss by unlawful means (the second of Lord Watson's principles in Allen v Flood) simply by classifying "seduction" as unlawful means. That only adds a pejorative description to a circular argument: see paragraph 18 above. To induce a breach of contract is unlawful means when the breach is used to cause loss to a third party, as in Stratford v Lindley [1965] AC 269, but it makes no sense to say that the breach of contract itself has been caused by unlawful means. Philip Sales and Daniel Stilitz, in their illuminating article "Intentional Infliction of Harm by Unlawful Means" (1999) 115 LQR 411-437, make it clear at p. 433 that Lumley v Gye was "founded on a different principle of liability than the intentional harm tort". It treats contractual rights as a species of property which deserve special protection, not only by giving a right of action against the party who breaks his contract but by imposing secondary liability on a person who procures him to do so. In this respect it is quite distinct from the unlawful means principle, which is concerned only with intention and wrongfulness and is indifferent as to the nature of the interest which is damaged. I therefore do not think that the two causes of action can be brought within a unified theory and agree with Professor Peter Cane (Mens Rea in Tort Law (2000) 20 Oxford JLS 533, 552, that —

"The search for 'general principles of liability' based on types of conduct is at best a waste of time and at worst a potential source of serious confusion; and the broader the principle, the more is this so. Tort law is a complex interaction between protected interests, sanctioned conduct, and sanctions; and although there are what might be called 'principles of tort liability', by and large, they are not very 'general'. More importantly, they cannot be stated solely in terms of the sorts of conduct which will attract tort liability. Each principle must refer, as well, to some interest protected by tort law and some sanction provided by tort law."

    33.  That said, I would not expect your Lordships to reject the unified theory adopted in DC Thomson & Co Ltd v Deakin [1952] Ch 646 unless it had serious practical disadvantages. After all, in Merkur Island Shipping Corpn v Laughton [1983] 2 AC 570, 607, Lord Diplock said that for 30 years the judgment of Jenkins LJ had been regarded as authoritative and that no benefit was gained by "raking over once again the previous decisions", as I must confess to have done. But I do think that it has been a source of confusion in more than one respect and that it would therefore be better to abandon it and return to the two torts identified by Lord Watson in Allen v Flood [1898] AC 1. To these problems created by the unified theory I now turn.

    34.  The distinction between the original Lumley v Gye tort and its extension in DC Thomson & Co Ltd v Deakin has been described in later cases as a distinction between "direct" and "indirect" interference. The latter species requires the use of independently unlawful means while the former requires no more than inducement or persuasion. But the use of these terms seems to me to distract attention from the true questions which have to be asked in each case. For example, in Daily Mirror Newspapers Ltd v Gardner [1968] 2 QB 762 the Federation of Retail Newsagents resolved to boycott the Daily Mirror for a week to put pressure on the publishers to allow its members higher margins. The Federation advised their members to stop buying the paper from wholesalers. The publishers claimed an injunction on the ground that the Federation was procuring a breach of the wholesalers' running contracts with the publishers to take a given number of copies each day. Counsel for the Federation (see the judgment of Lord Denning MR at p 781) said that it was a case of indirect inducement because the Federation "did not exert directly any pressure or inducement on the wholesalers: but at most they only did it indirectly by recommending the retailers to give stop orders." Lord Denning said that it did not matter whether one procured a breach of contract "by direct approach to the one who breaks his contract or by indirect influence through others". There seems to me much sense in this observation, although whether it leads to the conclusion that the defendant should be liable in both cases or neither is another matter.

    35.  In Torquay Hotel Co Ltd v Cousins [1969] 2 Ch 106, 138-139, Lord Denning changed his mind. He said that there was a distinction between "direct persuasion", which was "unlawful in itself", and bringing about a breach by indirect methods, which had to involve independently unlawful means. On reconsideration of the Daily Mirror case he thought the Federation had "interfered directly by getting the retailers as their agents to approach the wholesalers."

    36.  This treats the distinction as turning simply upon whether there was communication, directly or through an agent, between the defendant and the contract-breaker. But, like Lord Denning in the Daily Mirror case, I cannot see why this should make a difference. If that is what the distinction between "direct" and "indirect" means, it conceals the real question which has to be asked in relation to Lumley v Gye: did the defendant's acts of encouragement, threat, persuasion and so forth have a sufficient causal connection with the breach by the contracting party to attract accessory liability? The court in Lumley v Gye made it clear that the principle upon which a person is liable for the act of another in breaking his contract is the same as that on which he is liable for the act of another in committing a tort. It follows, as I have said, that the relevant principles are to be found in cases such as CBS Songs Ltd v Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc [1988] AC 1013 and Unilever v Chefaro [1994] FSR 135. By the test laid down in these cases, the Federation could not have incurred any liability. They were not encouraging or assisting the wholesalers in breaking their contracts. They were simply advising their members to exercise their own freedom to buy whatever newspapers they liked. The wholesalers had no right to the co-operation of the retailers in enabling them to perform their contracts. Liability could not depend upon the accident of whether the Federation had communicated (directly or through an intermediary) with the wholesalers. The distinction between direct and indirect interference was therefore irrelevant and misleading.

    37.  The distinction between direct and indirect interference has the further disadvantage that it suggests that the "primary form" of the Lumley v Gye tort and the extension of the tort are mutually exclusive. Interference cannot be both direct and indirect. But, as I have said earlier, there is no reason why the same act should not create both accessory liability for procuring a breach of contract and primary liability for causing loss by unlawful means.

    38.  In my opinion, therefore, the distinction between direct and indirect interference is unsatisfactory and it is time for the unnatural union between the Lumley v Gye tort and the tort of causing loss by unlawful means to be dissolved. They should be restored to the independence which they enjoyed at the time of Allen v Flood. I shall therefore proceed to discuss separately the essential elements of each.

    Inducing breach of contract: elements of the Lumley v Gye tort.

    39.  To be liable for inducing breach of contract, you must know that you are inducing a breach of contract. It is not enough that you know that you are procuring an act which, as a matter of law or construction of the contract, is a breach. You must actually realize that it will have this effect. Nor does it matter that you ought reasonably to have done so. This proposition is most strikingly illustrated by the decision of this House in British Industrial Plastics Ltd v Ferguson [1940] 1 All ER 479, in which the plaintiff's former employee offered the defendant information about one of the plaintiff's secret processes which he, as an employee, had invented. The defendant knew that the employee had a contractual obligation not to reveal trade secrets but held the eccentric opinion that if the process was patentable, it would be the exclusive property of the employee. He took the information in the honest belief that the employee would not be in breach of contract. In the Court of Appeal McKinnon LJ observed tartly ([1938] 4 All ER 504, 513) that in accepting this evidence the judge had "vindicated [his] honesty…at the expense of his intelligence" but he and the House of Lords agreed that he could not be held liable for inducing a breach of contract.

    40.  The question of what counts as knowledge for the purposes of liability for inducing a breach of contract has also been the subject of a consistent line of decisions. In Emerald Construction Co Ltd v Lowthian [1966] 1 WLR 691, union officials threatened a building contractor with a strike unless he terminated a sub-contract for the supply of labour. The defendants obviously knew that there was a contract - they wanted it terminated - but the court found that they did not know its terms and, in particular, how soon it could be terminated. Lord Denning MR said (at pp; 700-701)

"Even if they did not know the actual terms of the contract, but had the means of knowledge - which they deliberately disregarded - that would be enough. Like the man who turns a blind eye. So here, if the officers deliberately sought to get this contract terminated, heedless of its terms, regardless whether it was terminated by breach or not, they would do wrong. For it is unlawful for a third person to procure a breach of contract knowingly, or recklessly, indifferent whether it is a breach or not."

    41.  This statement of the law has since been followed in many cases and, so far as I am aware, has not given rise to any difficulty. It is in accordance with the general principle of law that a conscious decision not to inquire into the existence of a fact is in many cases treated as equivalent to knowledge of that fact (see Manifest Shipping Co Ltd v Uni-Polaris Insurance Co Ltd [2003] 1 AC 469). It is not the same as negligence or even gross negligence: in British Industrial Plastics Ltd v Ferguson [1940] 1 All ER 479, for example, Mr Ferguson did not deliberately abstain from inquiry into whether disclosure of the secret process would be a breach of contract. He negligently made the wrong inquiry, but that is an altogether different state of mind.

    42.  The next question is what counts as an intention to procure a breach of contract. It is necessary for this purpose to distinguish between ends, means and consequences. If someone knowingly causes a breach of contract, it does not normally matter that it is the means by which he intends to achieve some further end or even that he would rather have been able to achieve that end without causing a breach. Mr Gye would very likely have preferred to be able to obtain Miss Wagner's services without her having to break her contract. But that did not matter. Again, people seldom knowingly cause loss by unlawful means out of simple disinterested malice. It is usually to achieve the further end of securing an economic advantage to themselves. As I said earlier, the Dunlop employees who took off the tyres in GWK Ltd v Dunlop Rubber Co Ltd (1926) 42 TLR 376 intended to advance the interests of the Dunlop company.

    43.  On the other hand, if the breach of contract is neither an end in itself nor a means to an end, but merely a foreseeable consequence, then in my opinion it cannot for this purpose be said to have been intended. That, I think, is what judges and writers mean when they say that the claimant must have been "targeted" or "aimed at". In my opinion the majority of the Court of Appeal was wrong to have allowed the action in Millar v Bassey [1994] EMLR 44 to proceed. Miss Bassey had broken her contract to perform for the recording company and it was a foreseeable consequence that the recording company would have to break its contracts with the accompanying musicians, but those breaches of contract were neither an end desired by Miss Bassey nor a means of achieving that end.

    44.  Finally, what counts as a breach of contract? In Torquay Hotel Co Ltd v Cousins [1969] 2 Ch 106, 138 Lord Denning said that there could be liability for preventing or hindering performance of the contract on the same principle as liability for procuring a breach. This dictum was approved by Lord Diplock in Merkur Island Shipping Corporation [1983] 2 AC 570, 607-608. One could therefore have liability for interference with contractual relations even though the contracting party committed no breach. But these remarks were made in the context of the unified theory which treated procuring a breach as part of the same tort as causing loss by unlawful means. If the torts are to be separated, then I think that one cannot be liable for inducing a breach unless there has been a breach. No secondary liability without primary liability. Cases in which interference with contractual relations have been treated as coming within the Lumley v Gye tort (like Dimbleby & Sons v National Union of Journalists [1984] 1 WLR 67 and 427) are really cases of causing loss by unlawful means.

    45.  The most important question concerning this tort is what should count as unlawful means. It will be recalled that in Allen v Flood [1898] AC 1, 96, Lord Watson described the tort thus—

"when the act induced is within the right of the immediate actor, and is therefore not wrongful in so far as he is concerned, it may yet be to the detriment of a third party; and in that case…the inducer may be held liable if he can be shewn to have procured his object by the use of illegal means directed against that third party.

    46.  The rationale of the tort was described by Lord Lindley in Quinn v Leathem [1901] AC 495, 534-535:

"a person's liberty or right to deal with others is nugatory, unless they are at liberty to deal with him if they choose to do so. Any interference with their liberty to deal with him affects him. If such interference is justifiable in point of law, he has no redress. Again, if such interference is wrongful, the only person who can sue in respect of it is, as a rule, the person immediately affected by it; another who suffers by it has usually no redress; the damage to him is too remote, and it would be obviously practically impossible and highly inconvenient to give legal redress to all who suffer from such wrongs. But if the interference is wrongful and is intended to damage a third person, and he is damaged in fact - in other words, if he is wrongfully and intentionally struck at through others, and is thereby damnified - the whole aspect of the case is changed: the wrong done to others reaches him, his rights are infringed although indirectly, and damage to him is not remote or unforeseen, but is the direct consequence of what has been done."

    47.  The essence of the tort therefore appears to be (a) a wrongful interference with the actions of a third party in which the claimant has an economic interest and (b) an intention thereby to cause loss to the claimant. The old cases of interference with potential customers by threats of unlawful acts clearly fell within this description. So, for the reasons I have given, did GWK Ltd v Dunlop Rubber Co Ltd (1926) 42 TLR 376. Recent cases in which the tort has been discussed have also concerned wrongful threats or actions against employers with the intention of causing loss to an employee (as in Rookes v Barnard [1964] AC 1129) or another employer (as in J T Stratford & Son Ltd v Lindley [1965] AC 269). In the former case, the defendants conspired to threaten the employer that unless the employee was dismissed, there would be an unlawful strike. In the latter, the union committed the Lumley v Gye tort of inducing breaches of the contracts of the employees of barge hirers to prevent them from hiring the plaintiff's barges.

    48.  In Stratford, at pp 329-330, Viscount Radcliffe expressed some disquiet about using the question of whether the actual or threatened strike was or would have been in breach of contract as the touchstone of whether the union or its officers were liable for causing loss by secondary action. These remarks were made in the context of industrial relations, where the use of secondary action has since been comprehensively regulated by statute. In principle, the cases establish that intentionally causing someone loss by interfering with the liberty of action of a third party in breach of a contract with him is unlawful.

    49.  In my opinion, and subject to one qualification, acts against a third party count as unlawful means only if they are actionable by that third party. The qualification is that they will also be unlawful means if the only reason why they are not actionable is because the third party has suffered no loss. In the case of intimidation, for example, the threat will usually give rise to no cause of action by the third party because he will have suffered no loss. If he submits to the threat, then, as the defendant intended, the claimant will have suffered loss instead. It is nevertheless unlawful means. But the threat must be to do something which would have been actionable if the third party had suffered loss. Likewise, in National Phonograph Co Ltd v Edison-Bell Consolidated Phonograph Co Ltd [1908] 1 Ch 335 the defendant intentionally caused loss to the plaintiff by fraudulently inducing a third party to act to the plaintiff's detriment. The fraud was unlawful means because it would have been actionable if the third party had suffered any loss, even though in the event it was the plaintiff who suffered. In this respect, procuring the actions of a third party by fraud (dolus) is obviously very similar to procuring them by intimidation (metus).