Banking Law: Christofi v Barclays Bank Plc [1988] 2 All ER 484
| Pages | 142-143 |
| Published date | 01 April 1998 |
| Date | 01 April 1998 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025873 |
| Author | Anu Arora |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Financial Crime — Vol. 6 No. 2 — Banking
BRIEFINGS
BANKING
Banking Law: Christofi v Barclays Bank Plc [1988]
2 All ER 484
Anu Arora
Where a customer discloses information in con-
fidence in the course of the banker-customer rela-
tionship, but that information has already been
made known to a third party as a matter of statu-
tory right, the bank's duty of confidentiality does
not apply.
FACTS
The facts of
Christofi
v
Barclays
Bank Plc [1988] 2
All ER 484 were that C, the
plaintiff,
brought an
action against B, Barclays Bank Plc, claiming that
the bank had informed her husband's trustee in
bankruptcy that a caution on the matrimonial
home registered in his favour had been warned off
(a process which involves a statutory notice being
sent to the cautioner warning them that the cau-
tion will be removed in a prescribed period). The
trustee re-registered the caution, which allegedly
caused loss and damage to the
plaintiff.
The hus-
band's plaintiff claimed that he had instructed the
bank to have no contact with his trustee in bank-
ruptcy and not to give the trustee any information
whatsoever. The bank appealed against the refusal
to strike out C's claim as disclosing no cause of
action, arguing that the duty of confidentiality did
not extend to information already supplied to the
recipient in pursuance of his statutory rights. The
plaintiff contended that the bank had a duty to
protect any information expressed to be imparted
in confidence, even if not secret or unobtainable
from another source.
The court, allowing the appeal, held that:
(a) Although, a bank's implied duty of confiden-
tiality extended beyond information gained
during the currency of the account and derived
from it, it did not apply to information which
had, as a matter of a statutory right, already
been made known to the recipient (ie the
trustee in bankruptcy). Since the bank would
have every reason to believe that the trustee in
bankruptcy already knew that the caution had
been warned off, it followed that the bank did
not act in breach of
its
duty of confidentiality.
(b) Further, the claim for damages was flawed in
that the principal cause of the loss and damage
was the bank's decision to call in a loan rather
than the alleged breach of the duty of con-
fidence.
COMMENT
The Common Law imposes a duty of secrecy or
non-disclosure on the bank in respect of the cus-
tomer's affairs. Where, however, a breach of the
duty of confidentiality is threatened by the bank
the customer can obtain an injunction to prevent
the bank from disclosing information relating to
the customer's affairs but where disclosure has
already been made without authorisation the only
remedy
-
available to the customer is to sue for
damages for breach of contract. In Tournier v
National Provincial and Union Bank of England
[1924] 1 KB 461 the Court of Appeal held that
there is an implied term of the contract between a
bank and its customer that the bank will not
divulge to a third party, without the express or
implied consent of the customer, information
either about the state of the customer's account or
about any transactions entered into with the bank.
Any disclosure constitutes a breach of the bank's
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