orly?

"This appeal... raises a question of some importance to the very large number of people who are in the habit of using deck chairs to sit by the seaside at holiday resorts."

The above is a quote from the judgment of Slesser LJ in Chapelton v Barry Urban District Council. In this case, Mr Chapelton hires a deck chair for himself and for a Miss Andrews (who was this Miss Andrews? A girlfriend? A lover? His mother?). They both set up their chairs on a flat part of the beach, and then Chapelton goes to sit down on his and he falls through the canvas, jarring his back. As it happened, Chapelton received a receipt, the back of which said "The Council will not be liable for any accident or damage arisng from hire of chair". Fortunately for Chapelton, the receipt was not reasonably recognisable as a contractual document (because it was a receipt) and so Chapelton required a greater effort from the Council to ensure that he received notice of the terms, and thus they were never incorporated into the contract between the parties. Chapelton wins.

What a feel good story. They should make a feature-length film out of it, or something.

Law 211 says it's Parliament's function, but common sense says maybe a demolition team?

"As I said in Whiting v Diver Plumbing & Heating Ltd [1992] 1 NZLR 560 it may not be a bad thing if a cart and horse were driven through the Contracts Enforcement Act, but I do not consider that to be a proper judicial function."

This was per Tipping J in TA Dellaca v PDL Industries Ltd. Dellaca is the leading NZ case (as far as I'm aware) on the equitable doctrine of part performance. In Dellaca, Tipping J has to contend with two conceptions of what part performance is: acts done in reliance of the alleged contract, or acts done in 'performance' of it. In helping define an act of part performance, helpfully, he comes up with this:

"...it seems to me that there is an underlying theme throughout all the speeches that the act to qualify as one taken in part performance must be an act which, as Viscount Dilhorne put it, can reasonably described as an act of part performance in ordinary parlance."

Tipping J does actually go on to set out useful criteria for acts of part performance. I thought I should add that because the quote above could give quite a misleading view of the judgment. It did, however, provide light relief for me while reading what is quite a lengthly judgment.

As history would have it, the Contracts Enforcement Act has since been repealed and the relevant Statute of Frauds provisions are now included in the Property Law Act 2007.