UK: England and Wales: Registrar of Companies owed common law duty of care

Judgment was given yesterday in Sebry v Companies House [2015] EWHC 115 (QB). The trial judge held that the Registrar of Companies owed a common law duty of care when entering a winding up order on the Register to take reasonable care to ensure that the order was not registered against the wrong company. This duty was owed to any company that was not in liquidation but which was wrongly recorded on the Register as having been wound up by order of the court. The duty required the Registrar to take reasonable care to enter the order on the record of the company named in the order and not any other company. It did not extend to checking information supplied by third parties: it extended only to entering information accurately on the Register.