Events

Good faith & endeavours obligations in property contracts

The past decade has seen significant judicial moves towards embracing ‘good faith’ as a general common law principle applicable to commercial contracts, welcomed by many but derided by others as intrusive, uncertain and uncommercial. Dr Janet O’Sullivan’s lecture will explore these developments through the prism of commercial property contracts, considering the implication of terms as to good faith in performance and the fuzzy concept of a ‘relational contract’, as well as obligations to negotiate in good faith and the attempted importation of good faith into the innocent party’s options on the other’s repudiatory breach.

Mr Justice Edwin Johnson will discuss endeavours obligations. What is required by endeavours obligations? What are best endeavours? What are all reasonable endeavours? What is reasonable? These can be difficult, and acutely fact-sensitive questions to answer. This lecture aims to provide a guide to answering these and related questions in relation to property contracts, including the difficult question of the extent to which a party subject to an endeavours obligation is thereby required to act contrary to their own financial interest. The lecture will provide practical examples of the operation of endeavours obligations and review the case law on the meaning and content of endeavours obligations.

For full details of the Lectures, Lecturers and booking form visit the website at blundell-lectures.org