O'Brien v MGN Ltd

O’Brien v MGN Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1279 is an English contract law case, concerning incorporation of terms through reasonable notice.

O’Brien v MGN Ltd
CourtCourt of Appeal of England and Wales
Full case nameLee Headley O'Brien v MGN Limited
DecidedAugust 1, 2001 (2001-08-01)
Citation(s)[2001] EWCA Civ 1279
Court membership
Judge(s) sittingPotter LJ, Hale LJ, Anthony Evens
Keywords
Reasonable notice, incorporation

Facts

The defendant put scratchcards with its newspapers-- Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People. If the card came up with money, players called a premium rate number to see if the amount matched a mystery bonus cash amount. Mr O’Brien on 3 July 1995 got two sums of £50,000. 1472 other people did as well, because MGN had distributed too many by mistake. MGN had only intended to have one prize of £50,000. MGN held a draw among the 1472. MGN pointed to "Rule 5", which said there would be a draw where more prizes were claimed than available. Rule 5, however, although published in some newspapers, was not to be found in the 3 July 1995 edition. This only said ‘Normal Mirror Group rules apply.’ Mr O’Brien had seen that. The question was whether Rule 5 was incorporated into the scratchcard agreement.

Judgment

Hale LJ held that Rule 5 was incorporated. She noted that Rule 5 was no big burden on the claimant like in Interfoto nor excluding liability for injury like Thornton, but simply deprived a windfall.[1] She also noted that in the test for incorporation, the words ‘onerous or unusual’ are not ‘terms of art’.[2] Potter LJ concurred with Hale LJ.

Sir Anthony Evans was doubtful that judge’s reasons were right and thought the rule was onerous enough to require more notice.

gollark: Are the same thing, as far as I know? It's like saying "C++ is simply a more developed version of C so technically we could say that C and C++ are equivalent".
gollark: That's not how equality works.
gollark: I am currently an atheist due to not having any good reason to believe anything else.
gollark: Not particularly. If you prevent everyone from learning maths, you'll run out of engineers and such, which would cause problems as you need them to make good yachts.
gollark: There's a difference between being somewhat selfish and actively trying to make everyone else worse off for no apparent reason.

See also

Notes

  1. [2001] EWCA Civ 1279, [21]
  2. [2001] EWCA Civ 1279, [23]
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