John Frederick Davies (Respondent (Plaintiff) v Land and Commercial Assets Ltd (Appellants
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE CUMMING-BRUCE,MR. JUSTICE REEVE |
| Judgment Date | 17 February 1983 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1983] EWCA Civ J0217-9 |
| Docket Number | 83/0604 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 17 February 1983 |
[1983] EWCA Civ J0217-9
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL
ON APPEAL FROM THE BLOOMSBURY & MARYLEBONE COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Martin Q. C.)
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Cumming-Bruce
and
Mr. Justice Reeve
83/0604
MR. W. J. NORRIS (instructed by Messrs Calow Easton) appeared on behalf of the Appellants (Defendants).
MR. DAVIES (Respondent (Plaintiff) appeared in person.
This is an appeal from an order of His Honour Judge Martin made on 5th February last year when judgment was entered for the plaintiff in the sum of £1949. 43 with costs. The relief sought is that judgment be set aside and that it may be ordered that there should be a new trial of the action.
The background of the matter is that on an occasion which may have been in May 1980 (a date suggested by the plaintiff) there was a meeting between the plaintiff, who is an architect and Mr. Taylor, a director of the defendant company, at the plaintiff's office. According to the judge's notes of the evidence of the plaintiff, the discussion was about fees for work which he was handling regarding a job at Reading. On the face of that evidence, he had already received instructions to do the professional work, but the discussion was about the fees.
When Mr. Taylor, for the defendants, went into the witness-box, he described the instructions to the plaintiff as follows:
"Towards the end of December 1979 to January 1980, we commenced a number of projects in terms of preliminary investigations to test their viability. They were not developed. I contacted Davies to see if site viable. I had other architects on a speculative basis. Singer [we do not know who he is] had told me that Davies would work on that basis. I met Davies and fees were general discussed."
It is not clear whether Mr. Taylor was then referring to the meeting in May 1980 when, according to the plaintiff, he was already handling work for the defendant company, or whether it was some other day. The judge was faced with evidence from the plaintiff and the defendant in relation to an oral contract whereby the defendant agreed to instruct the plaintiff to carry out architectural and survey work for him for reward.
The account given by the plaintiff of the May conversation was that on that occasion Mr. Taylor promised him that he would receive £50,000 to £60,000 for the order and asked the architect if he would await payment of these fees until towards the end of the year when he would be in funds. At the end of the year he was paid what he regarded as a very small sum of £2,000, which included £500 expenses. He said it was not true that he agreed not to be paid until planning permission had been granted and purchase of the site effected by the defendants. He said he could not have come to an agreement like that because it was contrary to his then code of professional ethics. He said that Mr. Taylor did not mention that he would only be paid if he got planning permission and if the defendants bought the site and that, as far as he knew, planning permission for the Reading site was not applied for.
That evidence relating to the insistence of the plaintiff that he never agreed that he would not be paid until planning permission had been granted and purchase of the site effected, which I have just recited, arose by reason of the terms of the pleaded defence, because by the pleadings the defendant alleged that about January 1980 Mr. Taylor had met with the plaintiff and had then had a discussion about the plaintiff doing some work for the defendants and that at that time the defendants were considering purchasing a number of sites for future development, one of which was a similar site at Reading. It was pleaded by paragraph 5:
"The Plaintiff agreed with the Defendants that he would do work of an architectural nature on behalf of the Defendants in respect of a number of sites including the Cinema Site at Cheapside Reading and that the Defendants would pay the Plaintiff a reasonable fee for such work otherwise than on the R. I. B. A. scale but that the Plaintiff would not be entitled to any fee in respect of any work which he did on any particular site unless the Defendants obtained planning permission for that site and then purchased the site."
Paragraph 6 pleads:
"The Defendants accept that the Plaintiff did some work on their behalf in respect of the Cinema Site at Cheapside Reading but at the present time no planning permission has been obtained in respect of the site and consequently the site has not been purchased by the Defendants."
Therefore, the cause of action in respect of payment for the work at Reading had never accrued.
The plaintiff referred to what he regarded as a small payment for work that he had done on the Wembley site for which planning permission and sale had been effected, in respect of which he had submitted an account for about £20,000. There was a dispute over the fee for Wembley; the plaintiff sought to charge on a percentage basis but all he got was £2,000 which he accepted on account. When he was cross-examined he said: "I didn't think I could have justified £50–£60,000 on work I had done. All work was done in 1980. I had promised that I would wait for fees until the end of the year. Only the Wembley site was bought by the defendants. 1980 was not a very good year for me, but I had other clients." He had said when cross-examined that Taylor had promised him £50,000 to £60,000 for work at Wembley, Uxbridge, Stepney, Clacton and another site. He said that Taylor had told him on more than one occasion that he had access to millions of pounds of money. The work that he did was absolutely necessary for the application for...
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