Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:29:28 -0400

From: Jason Neyers

Subject: Grand Trunk Railway

But there could not be a contract, on the authority of Dunlop (decided 6 days later by the same Haldane), since the plaintiff did not provide consideration, the only payment being made by the owner of the horse for carriage of the horse (not the Dr. Parker who negotiated the ticket and who was a proper agent for the owner). As one case note noted (in Can Bar Rev.), it is better to view Dr. Parker as an agent in the sense that he has permission to make representations and accept information on the plaintiff's behalf. In that sense, it is an agency similar to that of the bailment on terms cases. What would be the correct word for such a person? Is agent the right one? A representation agent? A limited mandate agent?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hedley, Steve"
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 7:14 am
Subject: RE: ODG: Grand Trunk Railway

This is indeed the question: whether he authorised the making of a contract which would bind him. As he was there when the contract was made, Haldane rather thought that he did. As Haldane put it:

The proper inference appears to be that when he and Dr. Parker had put the horse into the train, he went with Dr. Parker to the agent's office with the intention that Dr. Parker should make, as regards both the horse and himself, the whole of the necessary arrangements at the office. If Dr. Parker had been acting for himself, there can be no doubt that he would have been bound by the terms of the document he received from the agent and by his signature expressly told the company that he understood. Can the respondent be in a better position? On the evidence, can he say that the company's agent was not led by him to believe that Dr. Parker, by whose side he stood while the contract was being made, was making it with his assent? 'I was standing right there,' he says in his cross-examination, 'alongside Dr. Parker.'

Then Haldane quotes further from the cross-examination:

Q. What did Dr. Parker say after he had signed the contract?

A. He folded the contract up and said he would send that to Dr. McCombe by mail, and 'it will be there before you will be there,' and he says, 'No, you must give it to this man, he must carry it with him, and it shows that he is travelling with this car.' They just handed it to me and I put it in my pocket.

Haldane concludes:

Under such circumstances the true inference is that the respondent accepted the document knowing that it contained the contract obtained by Dr. Parker for his journey, and in accepting it accepted all the terms which were set out on the face of the document, and which he would have seen had he taken the trouble to look at what was handed to him. It does not appear possible to say, in this case, that he was misled in any way, or that the agent need have done more than he did when he handed over a document which set out the terms offered for acceptance with great distinctness, in the form which the Railway Board had directed.

--
Jason Neyers
January Term Director
Associate Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
University of Western Ontario
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435

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