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Contracts

Q: Verbal contracts

A Macclesfield band won a small claims court case against a club which cancelled the group's booking at less than 48 hours notice. Remarkably there was no written contract. The band says its victory is a legal precedent. Is this true?

A: No, it is not a legal precedent. In the technical sense of the expression "legal precedent", the case has no binding effect on any count in other cases, because small claims court cases are conducted in private, without strict rules of evidence, are equivalent to arbitration, are not reported, and do not turn on fine points of law.

Even in the non-technical sense of novelty, the suggestion that the case is a legal precedent is not true, There is nothing remarkable about the result or about the fact that no written contracted existed. There is no need for any contract of that kind to be in writing and such contracts very often are not, particularly if arranged at short notice. Obviously oral contracts, if disputed are more difficult to prove because they depend on oral testimony, but they are no less binding. Certain special types of contract, such as those relating to land and contracts of guarantee, must be in writing, but not the type of contract involved here.

The only relevance of the booking being cancelled at less than 48 hours notice is the effect this may have on damages for breach of contract because the band would be under a duty to mitigate its loss by trying to obtain a replacement booking for the date in question and the less time they have to do this the less likely they are to succeed. Indeed, with less than 48 hours notice, there is little they could do unless they happen to be aware of a requirement of their services on the date in question. Accordingly there is nothing remarkable about the case at all.

First published August 1995