CL-2018-000297, CL-2018-000404, CL-2018-000590, - [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm)

In the event, I did not need to decide the point, and I said that it would merit a fuller consideration of the authorities and more fully considered and developed submissions than I had had in that case (ibid at [15]). Subject to that important caveat, I expressed a tentative conclusion, obiter, that “there is much to be said for [the] proposition … that where a statement of fact is made, with a view to inducing a contract, indifferent as to what the statement will convey, so it can be said that the representor was recklessly indifferent as to whether he was misleading the representee, that is deceit (if the statement be untrue)” (ibid at [35]). I emphasised at the start of my discussion of the point that I was only concerned with a case where a representor has said that which they appreciate has the character of a representation (ibid at [16]), and I put the force of the argument for saying that there can be deceit where there is reckless indifference as to meaning in these terms (ibid at [22]):

“The representor who says something it occurs to him to say [I add, for clarity, intending by doing so to induce the representee to act on what is said], which in fact conveys that which the representor knows full well to be untrue, and whose only defence to a charge that he knowingly spoke an untruth is to say he did not because he did not care what his words might be taken by the representee to mean deserves no better treatment under the law, it might be thought, than the representor who understands that his words will convey what in fact they convey and does not care whether, in that meaning, they are words of truth.”