The contractor successfully tendered for work involving the replacement of the existing Blackfriars Bridge pursuant to an employer’s invitation, which stated that the work was to be carried out pursuant to a specification. The specification included wrought iron caissons which were to form the foundations of the piers ‘as shewn on [certain] drawings’. It subsequently turned out that the caissons as designed ‘would not answer to their purpose, and the plan of the work was altered’, causing consequential expense and delay to the contractor. The contractor’s claim was based on the contention that the employer had impliedly warranted that the bridge could be built according to the specification.
Held: If there was an agreement for work to be undertaken, but no agreement as to the price to be paid, then the contractor could be paid on a quantum meruit, a sum calculated to reflect the value of the work undertaken.
Lord Cairns said that if there was additional or varied work: ‘ . . so peculiar, so unexpected, and so different from what any person reckoned or calculated upon, that it is not within the contract at all; then, it appears to me, one of two courses might have been open to him; he might have said: I entirely refuse to go on with the contract . . or he might have said, I will go on with this, but this is not the kind of extra work contemplated by the contract, and if I do it, I must be paid a quantum meruit for it.’
Lord Chelmsford thought that ‘in the exercise of common prudence’ the contractor before tender ought to have informed himself of ‘all the particulars connected with the work, and especially as to the practicability of executing every part of the work contained in the specification, according to the specified terms and conditions’.
Judges:
Cairns LC, Lord Chelmsford
Citations:
(1876) 1 App Cas 120, 79 ER 185
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – AMEC Mining v Scottish Coal Company SCS 6-Aug-2003
The pursuers contracted to remove coal by opencast mining from the defender’s land. They said the contract assumed the removal first of substantial peat depositys from the surface by a third party. They had to do that themselves at substantial cost. . .
Cited – MT Hojgaard As v EON Climate and Renewables UK Robin Rigg East Ltd and Another SC 3-Aug-2017
The defendants had requested tenders for the design and construction of an offshore wind farm. The court now considered the situation arising because of inconsistencies between documents in the tender request. The successful tender was based upon an . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract
Updated: 03 September 2022; Ref: scu.185453