The defendants were desirous of doing, and were in fact doing, their utmost to perform their contract, but remained in breach.
Held: A mere misconstruction of the obligations in a contract does not amount to repudiation. A party who takes action relying simply on the terms of the contract, and not manifesting by his conduct an ulterior intention to abandon it, is not to be treated as repudiating it. Singleton LJ referred to a judgment of Lord Justice Atkin in an earlier case, and said: ‘After he had cited definitions of repudiation he added, ‘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 contact.”
Judges:
Singleton LJ
Citations:
[1953] 1 WLR 106
Cited by:
Cited – Woodar Investment Development Ltd v Wimpey Construction UK Ltd HL 14-Feb-1980
Wimpey agreed to buy land from Woodar for a sum of andpound;850,000 of which andpound;150,000 was to be paid to Transworld. A month later Wimpey sent a letter purporting to rescind the contract and Woodar sued for damages including the . .
Cited – Lidl UK Gmbh v Hertford Foods Ltd and Another CA 20-Jun-2001
The respondent had contracted to supply tinned corned beef to the appellant, but had become unable to fulfil the orders because of industrial action in Brazil. The appellant had purchased supplies elsewhere and set off the cost of that against the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract
Updated: 11 May 2022; Ref: scu.538238