The Council, the Computer and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977
| Date | 01 July 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1995.tb02034.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1995 |
| Author | Elizabeth Macdonald |
July
19951
The
St
Albans
Case
persons’ or persons with ‘protected interests.’ Nor does it involve a lot of
ad
hoc
reasoning whenever new factual situations are confronted. Nor does it involve a
denial that policy is at the root of all decisions in this area, no matter what language
is used to disguise this fact.
On the contrary, what this analysis of
Marc Rich
does do is emphasise that no
matter how much judges and others may make protestations to the contrary, they
cannot help but give effect to a more or less consistent policy in which they
-
albeit perhaps subconsciously
-
strongly believe. And
so
it should be, for if no
consistent patterns of judicial behaviour were there to be discovered, how could
lawyers ever hope to advise their clients more accurately than could be done by the
lay passengers on the Clapham omnibus?
The Council, the Computer and the Unfair Contract
Terms Act
1977
Elizabeth
Macdonald*
It is only in relatively recent years that a significant body of case law dealing with
the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 has begun to be generated.
St Albans City
and
District Council
v
International Computers Ltd’
provides an interesting addition
both generally, in relation to the scope of section
3
and section
6
and the
application of the section
11
reasonableness test, and also, more specifically, in
relation to two types of contracts
-
those dealing with the supply of computer
hardware and software,* and those in which a local authority is a contracting
Party.
The
St Albans
case arose because of the Council’s decision to install their own
computer with appropriate software. Tkdecision was made in the light of the
need to implement the Community Charge, but it was also intended to use the
computer to deal with the Council’s finances in general. After taking expert advice
on tenders, the Council contracted with the defendants, ICL. However, the
program proved
to
be defective and it produced an overstatement, by about
3,000,
of the population figure for the Council’s area. The population figure was required
to be supplied to the Secretary of State and affected,
inter alia,
the sums received
by the Council from central government, as well as causing the Council itself to set
its Community Charge too low. The resulting loss to the Council was something in
excess of
f
1.3m.
The question was whether this was recoverable from ICL. Scott
Baker
J
found a clear breach3 by ICL of an express term that ICL would provide
software which was reasonably fit for the Council’s purpose of maintaining and
retrieving a reliable register of the local community. ICL claimed to rely on clause
9(c) of their contract to limit their liability.4 The clause stated:
*Lecturer in
Law,
University
of
Wales, Aberystwyth.
1
The
Times,
11
November
1994,
Lexis.
2
ie programs.
3
A negligent misrepresentation of the reliability
of
certain
figures
was also found.
4
It
is also worth noting the judge’s dismissal
of
ICL’s argument that the Council should not
be
regarded
as suffering a loss because they recouped the loss through
an
increase in the Community Charge the
following year.
585
0
The
Modem
Law
Review
Limited
1995
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