Oldham v Kyrris [2003] EWCA Civ 1506 is a UK insolvency law case concerning the administration procedure when a company is unable to repay its debts.

Kyrris had operated 13 Burger King restaurants, including two on Angel Row and Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham.

Mr Mario Royle was an employee who sought a secured equitable charge, granted by Kyrris, for work he had done, but had not yet been paid.

Jonathan Parker LJ said that any equitable charge was a matter for trial and there was no sufficient proximity between administrators and unsecured creditors.

The alternative claim in negligence 141 In my judgment it matters not whether one adopts the approach of the House of Lords in Caparo Industries plc v Dickman, or the ‘assumption of responsibility’ approach which it adopted in Henderson v Merrett Syndicates: on either approach the result is the same, namely that, absent some special relationship, an administrator appointed under the 1986 Act owes no general common law duty of care to unsecured creditors in relation to his conduct of the administration.

These duties may arise in special circumstances which replicate the salient features of well established categories of fiduciary relationships.

These events are capable of constituting special circumstances and of generating fiduciary obligations, especially in those cases in which the directors, for their own benefit, seek to use their position and special inside knowledge acquired by them to take improper or unfair advantage of the shareholders.’143 It has not been suggested (nor could it be, in my judgment) that there is any relevant distinction for present purposes between a fiduciary duty and a common law duty of care.

Section 212(3) provides that on an application under the section the court may compel an administrator (among others): ‘(a) to repay, restore or account for the money or property or any part of it, with interest at such rate as the court thinks just, or (b) to contribute such sum to the company's assets by way of compensation in respect of the misfeasance or breach of fiduciary or other duty as the court thinks just.’148 To my mind, this is a further indication that, absent some special relationship of the kind described by Mummery LJ in Peskin v Anderson , an administrator owes no general duty to creditors.