| Court: | House of Lords |
| Facts: | A guy ships a car from Islay. The ship sinks. It turns out that by lucky chance, the guy didn't sign the waiver contract. |
| Posture: | Appeal (against an interlocutor of the Second Division of the Court of Session, recalling an interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary). |
| Issue: | Was there a contract here waiving liability? |
| Holding: | Allow the appeal and restore the interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary. (essentially, the plaintiff wins, I think, but it's sort of confusing, with the reclaiming motiond and the respondents getting assoilzied and so forth). |
| Rule: | Basically, there was no agreement here. Even the most valid of these agreements is sort of a sham, so if it's absent altogether, the plaintiff can win. |
| Reasoning: | The form contract is unreasonable, inscrutable, and not entered into freely. So it's tough to find sympathy for the carrier when they forget even to make someone sign it. (If you forget to cast the magic spell that eliminates liability, in other words, that's your problem.) We're already pretending people agree to all these terms when they sign... let's not start also pretending that they signed when they didn't. |
| Dicta: | This sort of document is not meant to be read, still less to be understood. |