“Hypothetically Speaking…” – The role of Counterfactuals in Claims for Misleading or Deceptive Conduct [2026]

The High Court has said: “The field of debate, causation, is one of the most difficult in the law, and one about which abstract discussion is seldom valuable for courts and those who practise in them.” Many legal practitioners focus so closely on whether a defendant’s conduct was wrong they overlook whether the misconduct was causative of loss. Greenway’s Dinesh Ratnam and Andrew Girgis will get you thinking “so what” by taking you through some of the common mistakes and look at the role of the hypothetical counterfactual in pleading and presenting cases for misleading or deceptive conduct and the extent to which it differs from causation in other contexts.

• 1 CPD Point