Contract

Early authorities established that liability could not be excluded for a breach of a condition implied by the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (SGA 1979) by exclusions which referred merely to warranty or guarantee, even if those words were cross-referenced to statutes or rules of law, which would otherwise give rise to an implication of such terms. Those authorities required any term excluding a condition implied by SGA 1979 to be in apt and precise words, if it was to be effective, for the clause expressly or by necessary inference to negative such a condition and for sufficiently clear words to be used to achieve that result. Recent authority held that there was no difference between lines of authority on approaches to construction, one of which required clear express words while the other favoured the natural meaning of the words used.

Any clause in a contract had to be construed in the context in which it had been found, meaning both the immediate context of the other terms and the wider context