Cases Commercial Disputes
Judgment Date: 07 Feb 2007
The court examined an option agreement relating to the purchase of land for development and was required to decide whether a clause providing for an extension to the option period had been validly executed. The finding involved application of the test in Mannai Investment Co Ltd v Eagle Star Life Assurance Co Ltd [1997] A.C. 749 to determine whether the notional reasonable recipient of the intending purchaser's notice to extend would have understood that the right to extend was being exercised.
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Judgment Date: 21 Dec 2006
On the evidence the claimant failed to prove that an oral representation alleged to have been made by the defendant had been incorporated into a contract between them.
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Judgment Date: 18 Dec 2006
On the true interpretation of a share sale agreement the expression "accumulated net worth" in the clause in issue meant "net assets".
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Judgment Date: 27 Oct 2006
Where a defendant construction company had, in a joint venture, built flats whose misdescription had been substantial, the claimant purchasers had been entitled to rescind or to complete and seek an abatement, so the defendant had not been entitled to require completion and was in repudiatory breach of contract. Subject to the reserved issue of whether they had the relevant knowledge, the Part 20 defendant joint venture partners had been seriously in breach of contractual and fiduciary duty in procuring the purchasers to breach their contracts by offering them an alternative to completion instead of seeking to agree necessary abatements and completing the sales.
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Judgment Date: 16 Oct 2006
A trustee had acted properly and reasonably on the advice of solicitors in commencing and pursuing litigation on a trust matter as the claims in the litigation had a reasonable prospect of success. Consequently, the trustee had not acted in breach of trust by paying monies out of the trust fund in satisfaction of the costs of the action.
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Judgment Date: 10 Oct 2006
It was proper to grant rectification of an agreement for an underlease where, because of a mutual mistake, the agreement had not given full effect to the mutual intention of the parties.
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Judgment Date: 09 Oct 2006
The obligation in a joint venture agreement on one party to procure that a loan was repaid by another party imposed an obligation on the first party to see to it that the second party repaid the loan or, in the event that the latter defaulted, to pay damages equal to the amount payable but not repaid.
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Judgment Date: 18 Jul 2006
A judge should have declined to decide as preliminary issues questions that ultimately involved issues of fact and not law, since his conclusion could only have been reached on the assumption that all the facts alleged and no others were established at trial. The judge had been wrong in principle to determine whether individual episodes of a television series were similar in content to the totality of a previous series and whether the dissimilarity was sufficient to justify dissolution of a licence agreement.
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Judgment Date: 05 Jul 2006
The parties had not reached a oral agreement providing one party with an extension of time by which to deliver an environmental report. Even if there had been an oral agreement, the court would have been bound to declare that no agreement had actually been concluded as the parties had been operating on a subject to contract basis.
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Judgment Date: 07 Jun 2006
The court determined various preliminary issues in connection with a steelwork construction subcontract, including the extent of the parties obligations under the heads of agreement and supplemental agreement, the extent of the parties agreement as to valuation, the main contractor's entitlement to an abatement in respect of defective work and whether the main contractor or subcontractor had been entitled to repudiate the subcontract.
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Judgment Date: 07 Jun 2006
The court determined various preliminary issues in connection with a steelwork construction subcontract, including the extent of the parties obligations under the heads of agreement and supplemental agreement, the extent of the parties agreement as to valuation, the main contractor's entitlement to an abatement in respect of defective work and whether the main contractor or subcontractor had been entitled to repudiate the subcontract.
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Judgment Date: 06 Apr 2006
An investor could not argue that he had been induced into entering a contract to make an investment by a misrepresentation as to the nature of that investment when the true nature of the transaction had been communicated to him in the final terms and conditions of the contract, which he had signed without actually reading.
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Judgment Date: 03 Feb 2006
A person was in breach of contract where he had been involved in setting up and facilitating a bid for an insolvent company from a consortium, to whom he was bound by heads of terms, at the same time as he was involved in a rival bid.
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Judgment Date: 31 Jan 2006
In the circumstances, a defendant was entitled to the rectification of a reversionary sub-underlease to include words that had been omitted from the original underlease where the sub-underlease did not express the common continuing intention of the parties.
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Judgment Date: 19 Jan 2006
Where the respondent entered into an agreement with the appellants to assist in matters of litigation between the appellants and another party, on a true interpretation of the agreement the respondent was entitled to the payment of a contingency fee on the payment of sums due to the appellants as a result of the litigation.
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Judgment Date: 20 Dec 2005
A counterclaim alleging breach of contract failed where the counterclaimant knew of and approved the conduct on which the counterclaim was based.
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Judgment Date: 31 Oct 2005
Where the appellant had a remedy in damages, he could not be required to mitigate his loss by accepting an offer that would deprive him of his remedy.
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Judgment Date: 24 Oct 2005
The underlying purpose of Council Regulation 44/2001 Art.6 was to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments in separate proceedings. Where a defendant in one set of proceedings was domiciled in England and other defendants in separate English proceedings were domiciled outside England, Art.6.1 applied as the claims in both proceedings were so closely connected it was expedient to hear the claims together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments.
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Judgment Date: 30 Jun 2005
The appellant building society (B) appealed against a decision ((2004) EWCA Civ 1063, (2004) C.P. Rep. 42) that their claim to recover a shortfall from a mortgage advance was time barred by the Limitation Act 1980 s.20(1).
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