Bell v Lever Brothers Ltd [1931] UKHL 2 is an English contract law case decided by the House of Lords.

Cooper negotiated a loan from Barclays Bank, which insisted that a professional management run the Niger subsidiary.

Cooper hired his friend, Ernest Hyslop Bell, a senior Barclays manager in 1923 as chairman of the subsidiary.

Bell had wanted to run the new United Africa Company, because he was too old at 54 to have a job in the City, and he had left his Barclays position.

[1] The jury found that Bell and Snelling's illicit dealings breached the employment contract and that if the Lever Brothers had known they would not have entered into the agreement.

The MacMillan article explains that the ratio was in part the result of media attention at the time, and socio-economic context of the trial.

Both parties were under the common mistake that Lever Brothers should pay the "Golden Parachutes" to Bell and Snelling.

In the point of view of Lever Brothers, they are in substance buying a right they already had, that is extinguishing Bell and Snelling without paying a cent.

Also in Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd v Meyer,[2] Lord Denning remarked the following, in the context to the equivalent of an unfair prejudice action under UK company law.