Purchasers had claimed rescission of contracts for the construction of ships and ‘alternatively, a declaration that the contract was null and void, or had been frustrated, or was at an end’.
Held: What the purchaser wanted, in substance, was to have the Court determine the parties’ rights. There had been no repudiation.
Atkin LJ said: ‘A repudiation has been defined in different terms – by Lord Selborne as an absolute refusal to perform a contract; by Lord Esher as a total refusal to perform it; by Bowen, L.J. in Johnstone v Milling as a declaration of an intention not to carry out a contract when the time arrives, and by Lord Haldane in Bradley v H. Newsom, Sons, and Co. Limited as an intention to treat the obligation as altogether at an end. They all come to the same thing, and they all amount, at any rate to this, that it must be shown that the party to the contract made quite plain his own intention not to perform the contract.’
Judges:
Atkin LJ
Citations:
(1919) 121 LT 628
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Eminence Property Developments Ltd v Heaney CA 21-Oct-2010
The court was asked whether a vendor of land, who served a notice to complete making the time for completion of the essence of the sale contract, and then, mistakenly, treated the contract as at an end prior to the expiry of the notice, was thereby . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract
Updated: 11 September 2022; Ref: scu.425464