Rectification: a duty to correct other people’s mistakes? Tamsin Cox & Julia Petrenko report
- In CDS (Superstores International) Limited v Place Road Properties Limited the court ordered rectification of a lease on the basis of common mistake (and alternatively unilateral mistake) in circumstances where the parties had reached agreement in relation to the rent provision in a lease, but the landlord later sent the tenant a tracked-changes version of the lease.
- Practitioners should be aware that, where there is prior accord between the parties and one party seeks to deviate from the same, sending the other side an amended version of the document containing the proposed change will not necessarily suffice to prevent a rectification claim from being brought if the other side only spot the change after completion.
Transactional practitioners will no doubt have experienced the to-ing and fro-ing of many versions of a document, amended in ‘tracked-changes’, shortly before completion of a proposed agreement. The decision of Lord Justice May sitting in Bristol County Court in CDS (Superstores International) Limited v Place Road Properties Limited (Case No: D01BS425) is important
