A railway company entered into a written contract with a firm of contractors for the construction of a railway for a lump sum. The specification attached to the contract and forming its basis stated that bores had been put down at various parts of the line, and that a copy of the journal of these bores might be seen at the engineer’s office, but that the company did not guarantee their accuracy, and would not hold themselves liable for any claim on account of any inaccuracy in the journal. According to the specification, only three descriptions of material were to be excavated, viz., solid rock, broken or loose rock, and soft. In the course of the work the contractors found that much of the material classified as ‘soft’ contained rock, and it turned out that the bores had not been made by professional borers, but by employees of the railway who had been engaged in similar work before, and that the journal of bores had not been prepared by them but was compiled in the engineer’s office from letters written by them. It appeared further that it did not accurately record the contents of these letters, but was the engineer’s interpretation of the information these letters purported to convey, and that in particular a substance reported in three instances as ‘black ban’ or ‘hard black ban,’ and in five instances as ‘rock,’ was changed into ‘black blaes’ and classified as ‘soft.’ In a petitory action at the instance of the contractors against the railway company for the amount of their loss under the contract, held ( rev. judgment of the Second Division) that the contract had not been induced by the fraud of the defenders in respect that the engineer honestly believed that the journal of bores correctly set forth the substance found, and corrected a misdescription of the borers as to the nature of that substance.
Citations:
[1912] UKHL 735, 49 SLR 735
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Contract
Updated: 25 April 2022; Ref: scu.619242