Victoria Laundry (Windsor) Ltd v Newman Industries Ltd
Victoria Laundry (Windsor) Ltd v Newman Industries Ltd is a Court of Appeal case about damages for breach of contract and how far losses are considered too remote.
Facts: Newman Industries was supposed to deliver a boiler to Victoria Laundry, but the delivery came five months late. Because Victoria Laundry couldn’t meet a lucrative Ministry of Supply contract, it claimed the profits it lost. It asked for two kinds of profits: ordinary profits it would have earned and extraordinary profits from the special contract.
Decision: Lord Justice Asquith held that Newman only had to pay for ordinary lost profits. The court said profits from particularly lucrative dyeing contracts were a different kind of loss. Such losses would only be recoverable if Newman knew about them and it was reasonable to expect him to accept liability for them.
In short, the breach does not entitle Victoria Laundry to recover all possible profits they might have earned. The court warned that giving a complete indemnity for all losses from a breach would be too harsh, especially for unlikely or unpredictable profits.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:29 (CET).