The Amount of The Award
The Court has wide discretion over the contribution that it can require. Traditionally this has been compensatory, rather than punitive. The starting point for assessing the appropriate amount was the difference between the net assets of the company at the date that the directors should not have traded beyond, and the net assets at the date of liquidation.
The Court however has wide discretion, and may award just a percentage of this. It awarded 70% of the drop in net assets in Re Brian D Pierson (Contractors) Ltd BCC 903. This was on the basis of the judge’s "guesstimate" that 70% of the drop in net assets was due to the actions of the directors, and 30% could be attributed to extraneous causes.
Read more about this topic: Wrongful Trading
Famous quotes containing the words amount and/or award:
“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography.... For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)