Does negligent misrepresentation trigger the lifting of the protection afforded by the without prejudice rule? asks Anne-Sophie Julienne
In recent years, English courts have shown increasing support to the without prejudice rule and the settlement of disputes outside of the court. The without prejudice rule renders inadmissible in subsequent litigation admissions contained in communications which are genuinely aimed at settlement. The rule is founded partly upon the need to give effect to the intention of the parties, ie their mutual intention to compromise, and partly upon public policy that parties should not be discouraged from negotiations by the fear that things said or done in the course of written or oral negotiations could be used to their prejudice in the course of proceedings.
PROTECTION NOT ABSOLUTE
Although the protection afforded by the without prejudice rule is not absolute, the courts have taken a restrictive view of the circumstances in which it will be departed from. Save on very rare occasions, it is the fact of the negotiations, rather than their content, which is of interest to the court. As Lord Justice Hoffmann (as he
