Co-operative Bank Plc v Tipper
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 07 November 1996 |
| Date | 07 November 1996 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Chancery Division
Before Judge Roger Cooke
Documents - amendment in pencil not operative
Where a document consisted of print, type and ink writing, the most natural inference to draw of an amendment in pencil was that it was not, and not intended to be an operative and final alteration.
Judge Roger Cooke, sitting as a judge of the Chancery Division in Manchester, so held in a chambers judgment reported with his Lordship's consent, in allowing an appeal brought by the plaintiff, Co-operative Bank plc against the decision of District Judge Beattie under Order 14A of the Rules of the Supreme Court that pencil alterations to the bank guarantee of the defendants, Mr and Mrs Gilbert Tipper, rendered the deed unenforceable.
Mr Ian Leeming, QC and Mr Nigel Bird for the bank; Mr Jeffrey Terry for the defendants.
HIS LORDSHIP said that the defendants were the directors of a limited company which sought facilities from the bank. The bank gave facilities on the basis of security from the defendants personally and a third-party charge on their house.
The guarantee was a printed standard form document and the description of "the customer" was erroneously stated to be the defendants personally rather than their company. Accordingly, when their names and addresses were typed in as the guarantors it rendered the documents worthless.
The guarantee was kept in the custody of the bank. At some stage an employee of the bank struck through with a pencil five lines diagonally across the page on which the defendants were incorrectly described as "the customer" and inserted the name and address of their company.
It was important to remember that the court lived in the real world and some judicial notice had to be taken of the way in which particular writing instruments were used in modern times.
The pencil was quite an old writing instrument. No doubt in its early days its great...
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