only be taken on the weight to be attached on exhibit D2 (i) and (ii) as they are
already part of the evidence.
Therefore even if email exhibit D2 (ii) is taken into account on the basis of its
admission in evidence by consent as submitted by the defendant, it has not
been demonstrated that exhibit D3 was ever brought to the notice of the
plaintiff by either emailing it as an attachment/soft copy or giving the plaintiff
a hard copy. Secondly the issue of whether the email was sent or received
remained triable. PW1 testified that the plaintiff had no written contract with
the defendant. Email exhibit D2 (ii) which I have quoted shows that the goods
were transported at owners risk and the owner had a duty to insure the goods.
There is no evidence that exhibit D3 in any form was ever given to the plaintiff
though the plaintiff is shown to have received email exhibit D 2 (ii) giving
notice of the standard trading terms of the defendant.
Resolution of issue No. 1
Halsbury’s laws of England fourth edition volume 9 page 242 paragraph 367
provides that despite the lack of any general power to strike out exclusion
clauses, the courts have inter alia and where appropriate, applied general rules
of the law of contract in order to control the possibilities of abuse inherent in
complete freedom of contract: (1) The party seeking to rely on an exclusion
clause must show that it was incorporated as a term of the contract, which
usually involves the taking of reasonable steps to bring it to the notice of the
other party. (2) An exclusion clause is to be construed strictly against the party
who introduces it and seeks to rely on it and this is known as the contra
proferentem rule. Furthermore at page 243 paragraph 368 it is written that for
exclusion clauses to be effective it must as a general rule be incorporated in
the contract at the time when the contract is made and it is insufficient if the
clause is put forward at a later stage. This principle is stated in the case of
Olley v Marlborough Court Ltd [1949] 1 All ER 127 where the plaintiff booked
a room in the defendant’s hotel and later saw a notice in the hotel room
exempting the defendants from liability for articles lost or stolen. The decision
of the Court of Appeal, per Singleton LJ at page 133:
“If the defendants, who would prima facie be liable for their own
negligence, seek to exempt themselves by words of some kind, they
must show (i) that those words form part of the contract between the
parties and (ii) that they are so clear that they must be understood by
the parties in the circumstances as absolving the defendants from the
results of their own negligence.
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