Cornhill Insurance plc v Improvement Services Ltd [1986] 1 WLR 114 is a UK insolvency law case concerning the presentation of a winding up petition.

Straight away Cornhill Insurance claimed that Improvement Services was engaged in frivolous, vexatious litigation and applied for an injunction to restrain the winding up petition.

Harman J refused the continuing injunction on the substantive hearing holding that the defendants were entitled to present a petition.

[1] In my view the correct test in approaching these matters is exemplified first by Ungoed-Thomas J, who was a great master of equity (and I, it must be remembered, am being asked to exercise the ordinary equitable remedies, not the Companies Court remedies), in Mann v Goldstein [1968] 1 WLR 1091, 1096 where he said: “When the creditor's debt is clearly established it seems to me to follow that this court would not, in general at any rate, interfere even though the company would appear to be solvent, for the creditor would as such be entitled to present a petition and the debtor would have his own remedy in paying the undisputed debt which he should pay.

This is a case of a rich company which could pay an undoubted debt and has chosen — I think I must use that word — not to do so from 12 June to today.