The Nature and Scope of Liability for Procuring the Commission of a Tort

Abstract It has long since been accepted that where a defendant induces a primary wrongdoer to commit a tort against a claimant, the procurer may be held liable for the losses and harm thereby caused. Typically, the existence of such liability has been asserted rather than rigorously demonstrated both by judges and jurists. And while some detailed scholarly engagement with this form of liability has been proffered, the explanations on offer have tended to rely less on established principles of law, than on certain theoretical pre-commitments held by the authors in question. The Supreme Court’s decision in Lifestyle Equities v Ahmed has injected some much-needed clarity into this conspicuously underexplored area of law. Yet even now, as this article seeks to show, there is much that remains uncertain concerning the nature and scope of such liability. It therefore seeks to shed light on those matters.