High Court says betting-exchange duty of care is not the Gambling Commission’s code, and dismisses the Ashton claim

The High Court has held that a betting-exchange operator’s duty in negligence, if it arises, is to take steps to prevent foreseeable psychiatric injury in the form of severe gambling disorder — not to apply the Gambling Commission’s social responsibility code as a civil standard — and has dismissed a claim brought by the family of Luke Ashton.

Mr Justice Swift handed down the reserved judgment, [2026] EWHC 2935 (KB), case number KB-2024-001178, remotely at 2 p.m. on November 13. The claimants were Ann-Marie Ashton, suing on behalf of the estate of her husband, who died by suicide on April 22, 2021, at the age of 40, together with their children. The defendant was TSE Malta LP. The judgment records that “Betfair is a trading brand/name used by the Defendant,” and that the claim concerned Mr Ashton’s betting on the Betfair exchange, which the court was told is operated under a remote betting intermediary operating licence and typically charges commission of between 2% and 8% of the amount won.

The claim was brought in negligence under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 and the Fatal Accidents Act 1976. The family argued that Mr Ashton suffered from gambling disorder, that the defendant’s negligence made it worse, and that the resulting distress was central to his decision to take his own life. In closing, their case was put as a duty to prevent a risk to his health once the operator was, or ought to have been, on notice that he might be at risk of gambling disorder, with the standard of care said to be the steps required by the Commission’s social responsibility code, starting with a telephone call.

The judge declined to map that regulatory scheme onto the law of tort. Section 24(8) of the Gambling Act 2005 provides that a failure to comply with the Commission’s code of practice “shall not of itself make a person liable to … civil proceedings.” He said that provision was not, by itself, a complete answer to a claim, but that “proper regard” to it required the conclusion that a common law duty of care “ought not simply to follow regulatory standards set by the Gambling Commission,” because that would “tend to usurp the position and role of the statutory regulator.”

On the duty that could exist, he formulated a narrower obligation: to act to prevent foreseeable psychiatric injury in the form of severe gambling disorder. That injury would likely be foreseeable, he said, only if the operator was on notice of a diagnosis of gambling disorder in any of its forms, or on notice that a customer’s gambling “was so extreme as to demonstrate a total lack of control.” In those circumstances, “the action required of a gambling company … would be to cease to provide gambling services to that gambler.” He added that the Commission’s social responsibility provisions, which are aimed at “gambling related harm” in a broader sense, were “an inapt starting point for any tortious standard of care.”

The claim failed on the facts. Two psychiatrists gave evidence on whether Mr Ashton met the DSM-5 criteria for gambling disorder in the period from April 2018 to April 2021. The judge preferred the analysis of Dr Needham-Bennett, instructed by the defendant, over that of Dr Barker, instructed by the claimants, and found there was “insufficient evidence to support a conclusion that Mr Ashton suffered from gambling disorder.” It followed, he said, that there was no sufficient basis for saying the defendant knew or ought to have known that he did, and that “the duty of care on which the Claimants’ case must stand or fall did not arise.” The claim was dismissed. He did not decide issues of standard of care, causation or contributory fault.

The judgment also records that the Gambling Commission reviewed the events leading to Mr Ashton’s death and, in November 2021, decided that no action was required. After the inquest, the coroner issued a Prevention of Future Deaths report raising concern about the defendant’s player-protection tools; the Commission responded that it intended to consider the matter further in light of the coroner’s findings.

The trial was heard on June 4–5, 8–12 and 15–19, 2026.

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