Negligence without loss

Veitch and another v Avery CA TLR 29 August [2007]

The defendant solicitor had been negligent in wrongly advising the claimants that they were in default under a loan agreement with the bank. Any loss caused by that negligence was to be assessed at the date of the breach of duty. The claimants were hotel owners whose claim turned on the prospect of their being able to trade their way out of financial problems in the recession of the mid-1990s, both as a conventional claim for damages on the balance of probabilities and as one for loss of chance. The judge had found that neither of those formulations of the claim was established because, on the evidence, the business was already doomed to failure. The client in fact had no chance of trading himself out of his difficulties, even if the solicitor had not behaved negligently, and therefore was not entitled to more than nominal damages. The Court of Appeal upheld his award of £5 by way of nominal damages.