There is a fine balance between holding a director personally liable as an accessory to a company’s negligence and the doctrine of corporate personality.
This was evident in the ruling by the UK Court of Appeal (Alex Lerner and Mary Read review the court’s decision in Barclay-Watt v Alpha Panareti Public Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1169) in which the court held that a company was liable to claimants for negligently marketing holiday-let apartments in Cyprus, but that the second defendant, a company director who was the “driving force behind the marketing plan”, was under no personal liability for doing so.