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The action for breach of warranty of authority, on which there are several Australian leading cases, is an unusual one in imposing liability for certain types of statement causing economic loss, and strict liability at that, well back into the nineteenth century. There is still international disagreement as to whether it is right to do this, and whether the action is rightly classified as contractual rather than tortious (which would have implications for damages as well as liability). Puzzles are also beginning to emerge as to exactly what promise the person concerned makes about the supposed principal, the range of persons to whom the promise is to be regarded as made, and how the doctrine interacts with situations where the principal is unidentified, or does not exist, or where the agent can be said to have been his own principal.