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The facts of the case are as follows. A company, Wolfson Informatica B.V., had been declared bankrupt on 4 September 1992 and Hamm was appointed its curator in bakruptcy by the district court. About ten months later the curator received a letter from the tax collector which stated that Wolfson Informatica B.V. had a right to restition of 12.069 guilders. Included with the letter was a standard return-form requesting Wolfson Informatica B.V. to indicate how they wished to receive this money. On 4 August 1993 the curator sent the completed return-form to the tax collector and by the end of August the money had been transferred to the company's bank account. However, the letter sent by the tax collector on 4 September 1992 was sent on account of an error in personam. The letter was meant for the parent company Wolfson Group B.V. and not for Wolfson Informatica B.V. In a letter dated 12 October 1993 the tax collector notified the curator about the mistake and requested repayment of the 12.069 guilders. However, the estate of the bankrupt contained too few assets to pay all the expenses of the bankruptcy. The curator accepted that the claim had the same priority as the expenses of the bankruptcy ("boedelschuld")(priority over concurrent claims and even over most preferred claims), but no priority over the other expenses of the bankruptcy, and thus refused to repay the sum to the tax collector. The tax collector raised an action in the Rotterdam district court claiming payment of 12.069 guilders from the curator. (in his capacity as such) together with interest thereon. Furthermore he sought declarator (verklaring voor recht) that his claim against the estate for undue payment had to be paid in full from the available assets in priority to all the other creditors of the bankrupt estate (including the expenses of the bankruptcy). The Hoge Raad admitted the action.

The testator quarrelled with his family and executed a will to disinherit his daughters. Shortly after this the parties were reconciled and the testator wished to make a new will which included substantial gifts to his daughters. He instructed his solicitors to prepare a will to that effect. Unfortunately, however, they delayed preparations for about two months and at the end of that time the testator died without the new will having been executed. The earlier will was therefore unrevoked.
The daughters sued the solicitors to obtain the sums they would have been entitled to under the new will.
At first instance the judge dismissed the plaintiffs' claim on the basis that the defendants did not owe the plaintiffs a duty of care, and that the damages sought were of too speculative and uncertain a nature. The Court of Appeal allowed the plaintiffs' appeal. The House of Lords decided by a majority that the defendants' further appeal should be dismissed.
In reaching this conclusion, Lord Goff of Chieveley, with whose opinion Lords Browne-Wilkinson and Nolan concurred, was strongly influenced by consideration of the position in other legal systems, and by the policy considerations that had been advanced by academic writers on the subject. Legal systems varied, depending on their particular history and characteristics, as to whether a solution was based on tort or contract. Lord Goff believed that a tort-based solution was most suited to the English legal environment. Nevertheless, he was conscious that this conclusion involved the recognition of a new category of claims in the law of tort, whose precise ambit remained to be explored.
This approach was endorsed by Lord Browne-Wilkinson, who emphasised the incremental development of special classes of claim in the law of tort. Lord Nolan accepted that the facts fell within recognised principles of the law of tort.
A strong dissent was delivered by Lord Mustill, with whom Lord Keith of Kinkel agreed. He examined the possible application of traditional rules of contract and tort to the fact situation before the court and was unable to find a way of accommodating the claims of the plaintiffs which was consistent with principle and did not lead to an unjustified extension of possible liability.
Two of the following comments on the case take up the problem of the contract/tort interface and consider the way that the problem has been addressed from the perspective of French, Belgian and Dutch law. The third comment approaches the facts from a quite different perspective and examines the implications of the fact that the plaintiffs' claim relates to a matter of succession. This fact gives rise to policy considerations that ought to be borne in mind when considering how far the imposition of liability in contract or tort is appropriate.

Het recht staat niet op zichzelf. Integendeel, het treedt voortdurend in dialoog met alle deelgebieden van de maatschappij waarin het zich bevindt. Dit is essentieel, want alleen zo kan het blijvend gedragen worden en zich in de maatschappelijk democratisch gewenste richting ontwikkelen met aandacht voor alle diverse lagen van de maatschappij. Recht en Literatuur en Recht en Cultuur als disciplines bestuderen precies de kruisverbanden tussen het recht en de maatschappelijke deelgebieden 'literatuur', 'cultuur' of, in het Engels, 'humanities'. Het recht dient als het ware geletterd te zijn in de humanistische betekenis van het woord, vandaar de titel van dit boek. Bovenstaande disciplines roepen hoofdzakelijk verbanden met de Angelsaksische rechtstraditie op, maar bestaan ook al geruime tijd in de Nederlandstalige rechtswereld. Diverse initiatieven aan de Vlaamse en Nederlandse rechtsfaculteiten zijn daarvan getuige. Dit boek vormt de neerslag van een van deze initiatieven, met name de Global Law lezingenreeks Law and Literature die aangeboden werd aan de Leuvense rechtsfaculteit in 2018. De Nederlandstalige Recht-en-Literatuurbeweging is dan ook in volle ontwikkeling. Dit boek draagt daaraan bij, evenals aan de geletterdheid van ons recht