Queen's Bench Division
Before Mr Justice O'Connor
Judgment delivered June 12, 1970
A college prospectus containing an outline of the syllabus of a course of study forms part of the contract between the college and a student, the court held when dismissing a claim for damages for breach of contract brought against Loughborough College of Technology, now the University of Loughborough, by Mr Edmund Francis D'Mello, of Pont Street, S. E. He claimed that the college had provided a course different from the syllabus it had advertised in a prospectus.
Mr Peter Pain QC, and Mr Stephen Sedley for that for Mr D'Mello; Mr Brian Neill QC and Mr J. P. Harris for the college.
His Lordship said that in 1963 the college advertised a new one-year postgraduate course in economics and administration in the oil industry. Mr D'Mello, who was then working for an oil company in India, saw the advertisement and wrote asking for further details. The college sent him a prospectus containing a syllabus of the course, college calendars for 1961-62 and 1962-63, and an application form. In due course the college accepted him for the course, and in September 1963, he joined four other students who were had already begun their studies.
All the other students stood the full year: three took their degrees and won a diploma. Mr D'Mello threw in his hand early in 1964 because, he said, he was put into a course different from the one he had expected to find himself from reading the syllabus. He claimed, inter alia, that the prospectus together with the application form, the college calendar and the correspondence between him and the college, formed his contract with the college and that the college was in breach of it.
His Lordship found that the prospectus was part of the contract documents, but that on the evidence Mr D'Mello had got what the college had contracted to give him. Plainly, the course was not what he thought it was. He complained, amongst other things, of the emphasis placed on various aspects of the course and in particular of a lack of sufficient slant on matters relating to the oil industry.
It was, however, for the college to make up its mind how it conducted the course, and so long as the college taught it no legitimate complaint could be made. There was no breach of the duty the college owed to Mr D'Mello to exercise professional skill and judgment in conducting the course. The course was being given for the first time and it had some teething troubles. But they came nowhere near proving that the college was in breach of duty under the contract. The claim failed.
Solicitors: B. M. Birnberg & Co.; Sharpe, Prichard & Co. for Moss, Toone & Deane, Loughborough.