Ffion Flockhart & Charlie Weston-Simons highlight the importance of complying with SPA notice provisions
Notice provisions are a common feature of most commercial contracts, prescribing how contractual notices are to be served, when and in what form. In many cases, a notice provision will be included for administrative convenience, with the primary aim of ensuring that a contractual communication is brought to the attention of the intended recipient, with no obviously material consequences attached to non-compliance. However, not all such clauses are so innocuous. In certain instances, the penalties for non-compliance may be very significant indeed; two paradigm and much-litigated examples being, in the real estate context, notices to quit and, in the insurance context, notifications of circumstances. If a notice to quit is wrongly worded, it can make the difference between exercising a break clause under a lease or being bound in to the lease for a further, unwanted period. Similarly, a notification which does not meet the specific requirements of the liability insurance policy under which it is given may have serious repercussions for future coverage.
The general lesson taught by most of the cases
