The court considered the requirements to establish a proprietary estoppel: ‘It is on authority an established feature of both promissory and conventional estoppel that the parties should have had the objective intention to make, affect or confirm the legal relationship.’ The court also considered the requirements to be established for the creation of a contract: ‘For a contract to come into existence, there must be both (a) an agreement on essentials with sufficient certainty to be enforceable and (b) an intention to create legal relations.
Both requirements are normally judged objectively. Absence of the former may involve or be explained by the latter. But this is not always so. A sufficiently certain agreement may be reached, but there may be either expressly (i.e. by express agreement) or impliedly (e.g. in some family situations) no intention to create legal relations.
An intention to create legal relations is normally presumed in the case of an express or apparent agreement satisfying the first requirement: see Chitty on Contracts (28th edition) vol 1, para 2 – 146. It is otherwise, when the case is that an implied contract falls to be inferred from a party’s conduct: Chitty, para 2 – 147. It is then for the party asserting such a contract to show the necessity for implying it. As Morison J said in his paragraph 12(1), if the parties would or might have acted as they did without any such contract, there is no necessity to imply any contract. It is merely putting the same point another way to say that no intention to make any such contract will then be inferred.’
Judges:
Lord Justice Mance
Citations:
[2001] EWCA Civ 274
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Koeller and Another v Coleg Elidyr (Camphill Communities Wales) Ltd CA 12-Jul-2005
The applicants occupied a house as licensees. An order for possession was made against them. The company was a charitable company set up to provide accomodation in communities for handicapped adults. The workers in the communities were not formally . .
Cited – West Bromwich Albion Football Club Ltd v El-Safty QBD 14-Dec-2005
The claimant sought damages from the defendant surgeon alleging negligent care of a footballer. The defendant argued that he had no duty to the club as employer of his patient who was being treated through his BUPA membership. It would have created . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract, Estoppel
Updated: 31 May 2022; Ref: scu.147456