AI Structured Summary
Not yet generated for this judgment
Judgment
Lawrence Jenkins, K.C.I.E., C.J.—The plaintiff has brought this suit against ten. defendants and as the case was ultimately formulated in the lower appellate Court, the complaint against defendants Nos. 2 to 10 was breach of contract and against No. 1 instigation to the breach of that contract.
The lower appellate Court granted the plaintiff relief against all the defendants.
From that decree defendants Nos. 1, 2, 8 and 9 have appealed.
In our opinion the appeal of 2, 8 and 9 fails.
The appeal, however, of No. 1 raises an. interesting point.
The fact, that defendant No. 1 may have induced the rest of the defendants to adopt a course of conduct which amounted to a breach of a contract by the other defendants with the plaintiff, would not alone give the plaintiff a right of action: to entitle the plaintiff to succeed against the defendant No. 1 he must establish not merely that defendant No. 1 procured the other defendants to commit a breach of contract, but that he did so knowing that there was that contract.
That appears to us to be the clear result of the decision of the House of Lords in Quinn v. Leathem [1901] A.C. 495, and also of a very much earlier decision in Fores v. Wilson (1791) P N.P.C. 55 .
Though the lower appellate Court here has held that defendant No. 1 did procure breach by defendants 2 to 10 of their contract with the plaintiff, it is not found that he did so knowingly in the sense we have indicated.
We have hesitated for some time as to whether we would send down an issue on this point, because we thought it possible that the evidence made it clear that there must have been that knowledge on the part of the defendant No. 1 but the learned Pleader for the plaintiff is unable to draw our attention to any definite statement to that effect.
We, therefore, think the matter must be further investigated in order that all the elements necessary to constitute a cause of action against the defendant No. 1 should be established.
Accordingly we send down the following issue :-
Whether it was with knowledge of the contract between the plaintiff and defendants Nos. 2 and 10, that the defendant No. 1 procured a breach of that contract by defendants Nos. 2 to 10 ?
We think that this point probably was not present to the minds of those concerned with the case in the lower Courts, therefore further evidence may be adduced.
The finding should be returned within three months.
We will deal with the costs of the whole appeal when it comes on again. We have heard the cross objections and we think they must fail.