Search

This note analyses the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Rock Advertising Ltd v MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd, a case that confirms the long uncertain ability of ‘No Oral Modification’ clauses to exclude informal variations in English law. This note argues that, while the Court was correct to reject the putative oral variation in question, the majority’s description of the law is unsatisfactory because of its detachment from wider contract law principle, and compares unfavourably with the alternative ratio by which Lord Briggs reached a concurring outcome. This note also comments on the Supreme Court’s (cursory) treatment of the portentous Court of Appeal decision in Williams v Roffey Bros, which has reformulated the law on contract variation across common law jurisdictions. The Court acknowledged, but declined to resolve, the tensions Roffey introduced in to the law on part payment of debts. While it is unfortunate that the opportunity to resolve these tensions was missed, this note endorses the Court’s (obiter) rejection of the analysis by which the Court of Appeal below sought to extend Roffey to the part payment of debts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case note comments on a recent English Court of Appeal judgment departing from the pre-existing duty rule in contract law found in Foakes v Beer and extending the concept of practical benefit as good consideration to this situation. The note addresses the questions of precedent, the nature of the purported benefit in pre-existing duty situations, its relationship with the vitiating factor of economic duress and the future of the doctrine of promissory estoppel. The note argues that the Court of Appeal’s method of sidestepping recent Court of Appeal decisions upholding Foakes v Beer is open to question, that the Court of Appeal failed to consider the relationship between practical benefit and economic duress and that the future of the doctrine of promissory estoppel is in doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]