Malcolm vs. Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford
An agreement between a publisher and an author for the publication of a book for a stated consideration and no more was a complete enforceable contract.
Where there was a practice which, even in formal contracts, left matters such as print run to the discretion of the publisher, the failure to agree on such matters in an informal bargain that otherwise possessed the attributes of a binding contract did not entail that a contract did not exist for agreement would either later be made upon those matters or the publisher would decide.
The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Mustill dissenting, Lord Justice Nourse and Lord Justice Leggatt) so held in a reserved judgment on December 18 when allowing the appeal by Andrew Malcolm from the decision of Mr Gavin Lightman, QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Chancery Division, (The Times March 23, 1990) that an enforceable contract had been made between Mr Malcolm and the delegates of Oxford University Press, when on May 20, 1985 a conditional contract for the publication of Mr Malcolm's book by the OUP was entered into on such words as expressed as "commitment" and "a fair royalty" during a telephone conversation between Mr Malcolm and a senior editor of the OUP.
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