The court looks to see if it was obvious to the parties that a term was
intended to form part of a contract. If something clearly looks like a
contractual document, it can be assumed that the party understands that it
is to be included and binding, even if the terms have not actually been read.
On the other hand, if it is not obvious that a statement is part of a contract,
then nothing will be assumed.
This arose in the following case regarding a ticket.
A lot of problems regarding notice have arisen out of ‘ticket’ cases. These
are really decisions based on the contractual effect of tickets, often for
public transport, but they help to form a general picture of what is need for
a term to be incorporated. The Court of Appeal have formulated two
questions that need to be considered in considering liability.
- Did the plaintiff read, or was he aware of, the term?
- If not, did the defendant do what was reasonably sufficient to give the
plaintiff notice of the term?
The following case shows that if the ticket contains writing which is not
legible then the writing will not form part of the contract.
98 Contract law
Try to find some example of documents or tickets with on them. Are they
the kind of documents that you would normally keep? Would you expect to
read them before forming a contract?Chapelton v Barry UDC (1940)
A receipt for the hire of a deckchair on Barry beach had printing on the
back. It was held not to be the type of document that would be regarded
as of contractual importance, and the words on it were therefore not
incorporated as terms.Parker v South Eastern Railway (1877)
In this case the plaintiff left a bag at the left-luggage counter and was
given a receipt containing a limitation clause. It was held that as this was
the kind of receipt which had to be kept and was likely to be read, since
it was needed to retrieve the bag. The plaintiff therefore had notice of the
term, even though it was on a ticket which she had not read.Sugar v LMS Railway (1941)
A passenger was given a ticket which had an instruction on the front to
‘see back’ for conditions. The words on the back were covered by the