It is a well-established principle that banking practice will be taken into account by the courts. The principle makes good sense when examining the rights and duties which arise between the banks themselves, for they are the very architects of such practice. It is open to closer scrutiny when banking practice is relied on to mould the relationship between a bank and its customer who has no control over, and may be totally unaware of, the relevant practice. To say, as Willes J. did in Hare v. Henty (1861) 10 C.B.N.S. 65, 77, that “[a] man who employs a banker is bound by the usage of bankers” is potentially misleading. This half-truth was recently exposed by the Court of Appeal in Turner v. Royal Bank of Scotland plc [1999] 2 All E.R. (Comm) 664, where it was held that a bank could not rely on banking practice to imply its customer's consent to the use by the bank of confidential information in order to give other banks references about his creditworthiness.