Biggest civil fraud trial concludes with £177m award

More than a decade of litigation over computer giant HP’s disastrous acquisition of UK startup Autonomy from the late Dr Mike Lynch reached a provisional conclusion today. In ACL Netherlands v Sandelson Mr Justice Hildyard ordered the administrators of the estate of Mike Lynch o pay $236 million (£176.6m) interest on the £700m in damages awarded last year following a $5bn claim by HP.

The ruling comes four years after the judge found that HP had secured a 'substantial' victory in its civil fraud claim, the largest in English legal history. Lynch died in the sinking of his yacht Bayesian in 2024, shortly after being cleared of criminal fraud charges in the US. 

Today's judgment adds 68 pages to more than 1,700 pages of judgments handed down in the civil case. Ruling for the claimants, Hildyard decried the ’gross exaggeration of the claims to meet corporate objectives’, noting the claimants ’threw everyhing into their efforts to justify the figure of $5 billion… and pursued their exaggerated claims in a way which I would find difficult to accept was proportionate.’

He continued: ’Having lived with this case and its (literally) hundreds of thousands of documents and many volumes of transcripts, for so many years, I am in no doubt that it could, should, and, but for the commercial imperatives I have described, would have been pared down by reference to the sums realistically at stake.’ 

The judge described the costs as 'enormous', noting the claimants' costs of at least £120m. 

The administor of Lynch's estate applied to appeal on four grounds. All were turned down. 

Signing off the proceedings, Hildyard concluded: 'Subject to any liberty to apply which may be thought necessary or appropriate to include in relation to the retention/destruction of documents, that seems to me to bring an end to my function in these proceedings. It has been a long haul since their first issue in March 2015. Throughout the process, even in the difficult days of the Covid pandemic and the horror of Dr Lynch’s tragic death, I have been given exemplary and endlessly patient assistance at every stage. I wish to pay tribute and record my great gratitude to all concerned.'