Contract Law and Case Law - Coursework Example

Contract Law and Case Law Contract Law and Case Law The Effect of Williams V Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1989] EWCA Civ 5 on the English Contract law approach to Consideration Over the course of legal history, a large number of common law doctrines have been created to aid in the determination of whether a given contract is legally enforceable or if it was concluded in what can be perceived to be a valid manner. One of these doctrines is the requirement that contracts need to be supported by consideration. In contract law, a consideration is described as somethingof considerable value that has been given by the parties involved in a contract to aid in motivating them to agree to enter into the intended agreement and in the process exchange mutual performances that are considered to be legally enforceable. The doctrine of consideration is considered by most people in the legal profession to be the most problematic doctrine within common law1. There has been some considerable debate for a number of years as to whether this doctrine should be removed based on the confusion that is noted as often arising often result from its application, however a concrete decision is yet to be made in this respect. Lawyers often pose the argument that all contracts must as a matter of necessity be supported by an agreed upon consideration. In line with this argument, if an individual happens to promise anther party that he will perform a given act without there being any promise made in return, such an agreement is technically unenforceable as there will be no consideration exchanged in the contract agreement. In such a situation, the promisor is considered to be losing something without any gain while the promise on the other hand is considered to have made a gain without incurring any loss. However, if a promise happens to be made and the promise actually offers a promise in return, such an agreement is considered as having consideration and the contract that is entered into is legally enforceable2. The case of Williams V. Roffey Bros & Nicholls3 is considered to have change the traditional rules surrounding the doctrine of consideration as had been set out in the ruling that was made in the case of Stilk v. Myrik4. In the case of Williams V. Roffey Bros & Nicholls, the Roffey brothers were contracted by a housing association to refurbish a block that had a total of 27 flats. After their being assigned this contract, the Roffey Brothers decided to subcontract the carpentry work that would be involved in the refurbishment to Williams for an agreed price of £20,000. However, about 6 months into the refurbishment, Williams realized that he had greatly underpriced his contract and would soon be unable to complete the work within the specified time-frame. When Williams approached the Roffey Brothers with these concerns, the Roffey Brothers concurred to paying Williams an additional amount of£575 for every flat as they were concerned that any delayed progress on the work project might cause them to be liable under a penalty clause that was built into the main contract5. Although Williams continued to work on the project for an additional time period of 6 weeks, Roffey Brothers only made an additional payment of £500 and this caused him to refuse to make any progress on the work unless the full payments were made. Williams sued the Roffey Brothers when they contracted a different carpenter and even declined to pay Williams the extra payments that they had promised. In making this decision, the Roffey Brothers argued that no consideration had been provided by Williams primarily because he was already under a preexisting contract-based obligation to finish working on the project. When the suit was brought before the court, the judge ruled that the claimant in this case had provided adequate consideration. This was done through the granting of a considerable benefit to the defendants that allowed them to successfully avoid possible penalties under the penalty clause. As such, the Roffey Brothers were found to be liable to pay the extra amount that they had promised. It can be argue that the reason as to why the case was decided in the favor of Williams is that after having entered into the second agreement with the RoffeyBrothers, Williams continued with his work and as such did not breach the contract that he had entered into. In addition to this, until they defaulted on paying Williams his dues, the Roffey Brothers had not had to look into employing another sub-contractor and this had made them considerable savings in both money and time and the defendants were not penalized for not delivering on the project within the specified time frame6. In making his concluding statement, Gildewell L.J. pointed out that as opposed to contravening the principles outlined in Stilk v. Myrick,his sole intention was aimed at limiting the application of this principle and refining it.He also argued that the severely inflexibleinterpretationof the doctrine of consideration that was applied in Stilk v Myrick was primarily a direct result of the sea faring conditions that were present in the 18th Century. In this manner, the decision in Williams V Roffey Bros & Nicholls is seen to have created a new precedence that greatly changed the legal approach to the doctrine of consideration7. After the ruling in Williams V Roffey Bros & Nicholls had been made, it was quickly adopted throughout Britain as well as a number of commonwealth countries where the principles that it presents have been used in the deciding of a large number of cases. The ruling in Williams v. Roffey is seen to present considerable challenges to the traditional rules that had previously governed the rule of consideration as they significantly widened the scope of this doctrine. As a result of this ruling, any promises that are made by a party to perform existing duties can now be considered as being good consideration in the event that they happen to lead to practical benefit. Breach of Duty In a perfect world, the parties that enter into an agreement would receive the expected benefits and be pleased with the eventual outcome of the agreement without there being any disputes between them. This is not the case however in the real world as it is quite common for agreements to be marred by financial problems, delays and a host of other unexpected events that all serve to eventually prevent or hinder a contract agreement from being carried out successfully. Business contracts create sets of obligations and its imperative that the companies or individuals that enter into such an agreement ensure that they fulfill the duties that are set out in such agreements. According to the law, the failure by either of the given parties to a contract to fulfill the end of a bargain agreement as set out by a contract is typically referred to as a contract breach. Depending on the particular terms that have been spelt out in a contract agreement, a breach of duty can generally occur in the event that one of the parties in the contract fails to deliver on the agreement in god time, fails to perform or deliver on the specifics that have been agreed upon in the contract or even ignores the contract and fails to even make an attempt at delivering on it. Contract breaches are generally categorized as immaterial or materialfor the sole objective of helping to determine the best possible legal solution that can be employed so as to successfully remedy the breach. Before ruling in Donoghue v Stevenson [1932]8, cases involving negligence had had no standardized duty of care.The tort or wrong was recognized only in in specific circumstances depending on court findings that duty was actually owned9. However when making a ruling in the Donoghue v Stevenson [1932], Lord Atkins took the opportunity to develop a principle that would successfully cover all the different situations whereby courts held that a given party can be held to be liable in negligence. In this court case, May Donoghue was responsible for having brought a damages claim against David Stevenson after she had found the remains of a rotting snail inside a bottle of ginger beer that had been made by the defendant10. The main legal hurdle that Donoghue faced at this time was the question as to whom should be sued for the damages as it was impossible for her to sue the café owner either in tort or in contract. The only possible legal recourse that she had was for her to try and sue the owner ginger beer manufacturer.In his ruling, Lord Atkins developed the neighbor test and state that individuals need to ensure that they take reasonable care to ensure that they avoid any omissions or acts that they can be able to reasonably foresee will likely results in considerable injury to their neighbors11.The use of the term neighbor in this sense is seen to beg an answer to the question as to who should be regarded as being one’s neighbor according to the law12. The answer to this as proposed by Atkins is that neighbors are those persons that happen to be so directly affected by an individual’s actions that the individual in question ought to reasonably contemplate about how they will be affected by any omissions or actions. It can be argued that the term breach of duty and the neighbor test as outlined by Lord Atkinsin making his ruling are currently applied in law is too broad and as such it is impossible for any meaningful rule to be successfully extrapolated from individual cases. This is because nearly all the individual circumstances have their own distinctive sets of circumstances. The obligation for an individual to pay compensation is seen to naturally presuppose that the failure in the performance of a duty is responsible for having caused the damages that have been suffered by the plaintiff. The normal presupposition that is held in this case is that the failure by the defendant to perform his duty is the condicio sine qua nonof the damage1314. In this respect, without the breach of duty, the damages in question would not have occurred. As it is currently setup, there is too broad a range of circumstances that can be categorized as breach of duty. To illustrate this point, it is possible to use the classic example of an old lady that happens to have a heart attack as a result of witnessing a car accident that has been caused by an individual that intentionally ignored a traffic light. In this instance it is generally acceptable that the individual driving the car cannot be found to be liable to the old lady’s heart attack, as a result of a breach of dutyin ignoring a traffic light. The circumstances of this case cannot be explained by using the principle of condicio sine qua non’ as without the negligence of the driver, the old lady would not have suffered a heart attack. It can be seen that the determination of whether the driver in this example actually breached his duty of care is for the most part not a question of whether he breached his duty of care by ignoring a traffic light, to successfully determine this case, the element of breach of duty should be considered to be largely a question of attempting to balance various factors against each other so as to arrive at a possible answer to the problem. Bibliography Aust, Helmut Philipp. Complicity and the law of state responsibility.Vol. 85.Cambridge University Press, 2011. Benson, Peter. The Theory of Contract Law: New Essays. Cambridge, UK [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001. Harpwood, V. H. Modern Tort Law 7/e. Routledge, 2009. Jane Stapleton. Product liability.Cambridge University Press, 1994. Lunney, Mark, and Ken Oliphant.Tort Law: Text and Materials. Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press 2013. Madden, M. Stuart. Exploring Tort Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Mulcahy, Linda, and John Tillotson.Contract law in perspective.Routledge, 2008. ORiordan, Jimmy. A2 Law for OCR. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 2003. Ripinsky, Sergey, and Kevin Williams.Damages in International Investment Law. London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008. Stone, Richard and James Devenney.The Modern Law of Contract.Routledge, 2015. Read More