St. Albans City and District Council v International Computers Ltd

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
Judgment Date26 July 1996
Date26 July 1996
CourtCourt of Appeal (Civil Division)

Court of Appeal

Before Lord Justice Nourse, Lord Justice Hirst and Sir Iain Glidewell

St Albans City and District Council
and
International Computers Ltd

Damages - different sources of loss distinguished - whether computer program 'goods'

Council damages for defective software cut

A local authority suffering a loss of community charge receipts as a consequence of faulty computer software that provided erroneous population figures, was unable to recover the loss from the computer company that had provided the software because the chargepayers themselves were under an obligation to pay.

However, the local authority was entitled to recover damages from the company in respect of the increased precept payments to the county council that it had had to make and could not recover.

The Court of Appeal so held in reserved judgments allowing in part an appeal by the defendant, International Computers Ltd, from the judgment of Mr Justice Scott Baker (The Times November 11, 1994; [1995] FSR 686) by reducing by £484,000 an award of damages for breach of contract payable to the plaintiffs, St Albans City and District Council.

The Court of Appeal upheld the judge's decision that the exemption clause in the defendant's standard contractual terms and conditions seeking to limit its liability for loss to £100,000 was unreasonable and not enforceable under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

Mr Conrad Dehn, QC, Mr Timothy Lamb, QC and Mr Adam Tolley for the defendant; Mr Richard Mawrey, QC for the plaintiffs.

LORD JUSTICE NOURSE said that the judge awarded the plaintiffs damages of £1.3 million on the basis that the defendant had breached its contract to supply a computer system to be used in the collection of community charge by providing faulty software which in 1989 significantly overstated the relevant population.

Thus when the plaintiffs came to calculate the amount needed to defray their budgeted expenditure they had proceeded on the footing that they had a larger number of chargepayers to call on than they in fact had. So they had set the charge at a lower figure than they would have done had they known the true number.

Their losses fell into two categories: £484,000 which they had not received for community charge in 1990-91 and a net amount of £685,000 which they had had to pay out by way of increased precept to Hertfordshire County Council.

The judge was clearly right to hold that there was a breach of contract on the defendant's part because the software...

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16 cases
  • Your Response Ltd v Datateam Business Media Ltd
    • United Kingdom
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 14 March 2014
    ...is held (which is a tangible object) and the data itself (which is not) was clearly recognised by this court in St Alban's City & District Council v International Computers Ltd [1996] 4 All E. R. 481. It was followed and applied by Patten J. (as he then was) in Thunder Air Ltd v Hilmarsson ......
  • Fern Computer Consultancy Ltd v Intergraph Cadworx & Analysis Solutions Inc.
    • United Kingdom
    • Chancery Division
    • 29 August 2014
    ...as demonstrating that that gave him at least an arguable, if not a good, claim that goods were supplied. 76 In St Albans City and District Council v International Computers Ltd [1996] 4 All ER 481 the defendant had supplied software to the claimant Council and the Council complained that t......
  • Software Incubator Ltd v Computer Associates UK Ltd
    • United Kingdom
    • Queen's Bench Division
    • 1 July 2016
    ...1 All ER (Comm) 308. Southwark LBC v IBM UK LtdUNK [2011] EWHC 549 (TCC). St Albans City and DC v International Computers LtdUNK [1996] 4 All ER 481. UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International CorpECAS (Case C-128/11) [2012] 3 CMLR 44. Vick v Vogle-Gapes LtdUNK [2006] EWHC 1665 (QB). Commercial a......
  • Hadley Design Associates Ltd v The Lord Mayor and Citizens of the City of Westminster
    • United Kingdom
    • Queen's Bench Division (Technology and Construction Court)
    • 9 July 2003
    ...Interocean Ltd. v. Denmac Ltd. [1990] 1 Lloyd's Rep 434. The second was the decision of the Court of Appeal in St. Albans City and District Council v. International Computers Ltd. [1996] 4 All ER 481. In each of those cases it was not disputed that the relevant contracting party had what ar......
  • Request a trial to view additional results
3 firm's commentaries
  • Are Contract Terms Really Binding? Part 1 of 2
    • United Kingdom
    • Mondaq United Kingdom
    • 16 April 2007
    ...The threshold is therefore high (though note the decision in St Alban's City and District Council v International Computers [1996] 4 All E.R. 481 where a commercial bargain was found to be unreasonable). For a recent example of a limitation clause being found to be reasonable under UCTA, se......
  • Allocating Risk In IT Contracts
    • United Kingdom
    • Mondaq United Kingdom
    • 28 June 2011
    ...can justify and provide supporting evidence for sales claims. Footnotes St. Albans City and District Council v ICL [1995] FSR 686; [1996] 4 All ER 481 Pegler v Wang (UK) Limited (2000) 70 Con LR 68 South West Water v International Computers Limited QBD, Technology and Construction Court, 19......
  • UCTA and use of industry standard model form facility agreement
    • United Kingdom
    • JD Supra United Kingdom
    • 27 July 2017
    ...the parties are no longer dealing on the written standard terms of business. The Court of Appeal in St Albans City Council v IFC Ltd [1996] 4 All ER 481 CA has previously stated that some negotiation and amendment of a party’s written standard terms of business would not take the terms outs......
4 books & journal articles
  • Effective Protection for the E-Consumer in light of the Consumer Rights Directive?
    • Ireland
    • Hibernian Law Journal No. 11-2012, January 2012
    • 1 January 2012
    ...deterred from trading if they had to operate with a high risk of loss. However, the exemption of services which have already begun 85 [1996] 4 ALL E.R. 481 86 Donnelly and White, “The Distance Selling Directives—A Time for Review” (2005) 56(3) Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 200 at 208 87 ......
  • ASSESSING THE REASONABLENESS OF EXCEPTION CLAUSES
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Journal No. 2011, December 2011
    • 1 December 2011
    ...12 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act (Cap 396, 1994 Rev Ed). See, eg, St Albans City and District Council v International Computers Ltd [1996] 4 All ER 481; The Flamar Pride [1990] 1 Lloyd‘s Rep 434; The Salvage Association v CAP Financial Services Ltd [1995] FSR 654. 9 [2010] EWHC 720 (TCC)......
  • Unreasonable Standard Terms
    • United Kingdom
    • Wiley The Modern Law Review No. 60-4, July 1997
    • 1 July 1997
    ...Albans City and District Council vInternationalComputers Ltd,The Times, 11 November 1994 (noted, Macdonald (1995) 58 MLR 585), affirmed[1996] 4 All ER 481 (where this point is not discussed). In these cases, it is the fact that the clause iscommon, with the result that the profferee has no ......
  • European Monetary Union: Legal compliance for IT systems — Après ‘Le Weekend’
    • United Kingdom
    • Emerald Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance No. 7-4, April 1999
    • 1 April 1999
    ...Council v. Inter-national Computers Ltd [1995] FSR 686 (High Court). St Albans City & District Council v. International Computers Ltd [1996] 4 All ER 481 (Court of Appeal). (33) Bainbridge, D. (1997) 'Software licensing fundamentals', Computers & Law, Society for Computers & Law, June/July.......

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