Persons Identified in Schedule 1 v Standard Chartered PLC

At an interlocutory stage, a court should ordinarily refuse to strike out novel statutory claims where the legal issue is developing, factual and expert evidence may materially assist, and a trial is required in any event.

In claims under Schedule 10A to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, the meaning of reliance under paragraph 3, including its application to omissions, indirect reliance and market-price reliance, remained sufficiently uncertain to require determination at trial. The court also declined to strike out dishonest-delay claims under paragraph 5 on the basis that a later corrective publication was necessarily required. Judicial comity did not require adoption of another first-instance decision on the case-management question whether these claims should proceed to trial.

The defendant applied to strike out, alternatively for reverse summary judgment on, two groups of claims under section 90A and Schedule 10A to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The first group comprised common-reliance claims under paragraph 3, based on investors acquiring or continuing to hold shares at a market price said to reflect misleading published information, although they had not themselves read or considered that information. The second comprised dishonest-delay claims under paragraph 5.

The application followed Allianz Funds Multi-Strategy Trust v Barclays plc, in which Leech J struck out comparable market-reliance claims and held that dishonest-delay liability required later publication of the delayed information. The central questions were whether those conclusions should be followed at this stage and whether the present factual and pleading distinctions justified a trial.

1. Application dismissed. Both the Common Reliance Claims and the Delay Claims were permitted to proceed to trial.
2. As to paragraph 3, the court accepted that reliance must have substantive content and operate as a limiting requirement. However, the boundaries of reliance remained developing and uncertain, particularly where claims concerned omissions, implied representations, indirect reliance or the influence of market price. The interaction between the common-law test of inducement and reliance and the statutory wording could not safely be resolved on assumed facts at an interlocutory stage.
3. The pleaded positive belief that the market price reflected the defendant’s published information provided a possible factual distinction from Barclays. Whether market participants, analysts or other intermediaries had read and considered the information and thereby influenced the claimants’ decisions required factual and expert evidence.
4. Judicial comity meant that, if the court were deciding the meaning of paragraph 3 directly, it would follow Barclays unless convinced that it was wrong. It did not, however, require the court to adopt the separate case-management decision in Barclays to grant summary judgment. The present trial was already substantial, and striking out these claims would not substantially reduce its burden.
5. As to paragraph 5, the court doubted that liability necessarily depended on a later corrective publication. Paragraph 2 defined the sources of published information relevant to Schedule 10A claims, but it was not clear that it imposed the additional condition identified in Barclays. The statutory text, legislative materials and alleged overlap with paragraph 3 did not justify resolving the novel issue without the facts being established at trial.
6. The parties were directed to prepare an order. They were also expected to review the pleadings to ensure that all matters intended to be relied on at trial were adequately pleaded.