Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing, CISD, SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 27/10/2016

https://www.soas.ac.uk/cisd
Jack Blum discussed the need to reform Corporate Limited Liabiity as a means of holding individuals to account for the misdeeds of corporations. Blum is one the the world's leading lawyers tackling corporate fraud. He had played a leading role since the 1970s in cases including the Lockheed F104 fighter case, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Internaitonal (BCCI), the Union Bank of Switzerland amongst other cases. 

Vijay Ganapathy, a senior solicitor who undertakes industrial disease and complex injury cases, joined the seminar as a discussant. He is trained as both a barrister and solicitor and after undertaking a mixture of both commercial and voluntary legal work, he realised that his sole interest lay in acting for claimants faced with difficult circumstances. After completing his training contract at Hodge Jones & Allen, he joined Leigh Day in February 2007. Since then, he has maintained a track record of achieving success in difficult cases, particularly asbestos disease cases. His most notable success occurred when he acted for Mr Chandler in the landmark case of Chandler v Cape Plc [2011] EWHC 951 (QB) which set a new legal precedent both in tort and company law because it was the first case of its kind to hold a parent/group company liable for one of its subsidiary company's operations. 

The seminar was chaired by Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London. He has his PhD in Political Science from Keele University and a BA in History from Nottingham. Prior to joining SOAS he held posts at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall and directed the British American Security Information Council in Washington DC from 1986-2001. His books include America, Hitler and the UN (I.B. Tauris 2011), A Case to Answer (Spokesman, 2004), The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace (Politico's Publishing, 2004). He leads a research group on Corporate Limited Liability with research outputs for the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Royal Society of Arts and Open Democracy. 

The discussion was part of the SOAS CISD research project on Corporate Accountability and Limited Liability.