Her Majesty's Commissioners of Customs and Excise v Barclays Bank Plc [2006] UKHL 28 is a leading English tort law case concerning negligent misstatement and pure economic loss.
By law, banks are required to comply with requests for freezing orders and are paid for the service.
But due to "operator error", the customer proceeded to empty all of the money from the account.
The House of Lords unanimously disapproved the Court of Appeal's decision, that "assumption of responsibility" was indistinct and subsumed into the law of negligence.
It held, however, that in this case, because the bank was required by law to comply with the freezing order, there could not be said to have arisen any assumption of responsibility on Hedley Byrne grounds.