Faith, hope and Lloyd's
THERE are worse faults than charity and amiability, so I am obliged to Keith Whit- ten, who this week (Letters, page 21) charges me with them — charitably and amiably. The key word in his letter is 'negligence'. Some members of Lloyd's had their money effectively misappropri- ated by those who had accepted positions of trust. Some members (sometimes the same ones) have lost money by being committed to commercial risks which, as it proved, went. wrong. Both of these are plain cases. The question now is: might there be a middle case? Might some underwriters have lost their members' money, not through criminal fraud, but
through actionable incompetence or negli- gence? Were there (for instance) some liabilities which ought, without hindsight, to have been reinsured and were not? My bet is that the lawyers are sharpening their pens and their wits.
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