‘Construction, Implication, and the Role of Precedent’

Serle Court Pupil, John Eldridge, will be speaking at the University of Cambridge Private Law Centre at 5:30 pm on Friday, 5^th February.

The seminar titled ‘Construction, Implication, and the Role of Precedent’ explores the interaction between the processes by which statements of intention are construed or terms are implied. The vehicle for the exploration is the decision in Devani v Wells, where the Supreme Court held that the processes led the same conclusion in relation to an alleged oral contract to pay commission to an estate agent. ‘Construction’ was used to deduce agreement to an essential term from a conversation during which the parties remained silent on the matter. The same term was then implied on a factual basis. This reasoning is unconvincing. Given the Court’s reasoning, it ought to have concluded that the essential term omitted during the conversation was a term implied in law.

The seminar is based upon a paper jointly authored by John Carter, John Eldridge, and Elisabeth Peden.