On occasions where a claim or claims are outstanding or launched against a company and the company is or has been put into liquidation and the company is dissolved before the resolution of the claims it is possible to restore the company to the Companies Register to effect recovery of the claim against the company.
Alternatively a different approach may be taken.
When a company goes into liquidation, the creditors’ rightful claims against the company persist. The company loses its beneficial ownership of the assets. Reciprocally and generally, a creditor does not have a claim against any particular part of the assets of the company.
However, the liquidator owes the creditors a duty to, generally, find and get in the assets of the company. The liquidator also is obliged to notify the creditors of the company of the fact of liquidation and to seek out the creditors. He cannot just wait for them to contact him. The duty of the liquidator is a statutory duty. The records of the company will be the source of information regarding claims against the company.
A liquidator is an officer of the company.
If a creditor suffers loss as a result of the breach of statutory duty by the liquidator in administering the liquidation, the creditor has a personal claim against the liquidator in damages for the breach of statutory duty. (Pulsford v Devenish [1903] 2 Ch 624 and James Smith & Sons (Norwood) Ltd v Goodman [1936] Ch 216 (CA)).