How a typo destroyed 124-year-old company Taylor & Sons

Picture Source: 105 Typo Error Photos - Free & Royalty-Free Stock Photos from Dreamstime NEVER underestimate the importance of a single letter. In this case, an ‘s’. A 124-year-old family business went kaput within two months because of a typo on a government register. Really, you can’t make this stuff up. Welsh engineers Taylor & Sons, which was established in 1875, got a shock in February 2009 when Companies House, the UK government’s registrar of companies, recorded the company as having gone bust. It hadn’t. But Taylor & Son had. Note the difference — one had an ‘s’ and the other didn’t. The Telegraph in the UK, reported that while the mistake was caught and corrected three days later, it had done irreparable damage to Taylor & Sons, the business that was still kicking at the time. Now, a former owner of Taylor & Sons has successfully sued the government, which he says destroyed the business with incorrect spelling. Yesterday, the British High Court f...