From the Margins

I've taken to scribbling "blog this" in the margins of my text books when I come across funny, profound or egregious statements. Here are some from Contracts: Cases and Commentaries:

• "[...] but in my opinion such a person must bear the consequenses of his own exceptional ignorance[...]" Mellish LJ in Parker v South Eastern Ry. Co. (1877), 2 C.P.D. 416 (C.A.). Tee hee. Sometimes ignorance is less than bliss and not equal to a defence. And such a nice example of the business efficacy argument.
  
• "Without knowledge there is nothing." Lord Devlin in McCutcheon v MacBrayne Ltd. [1964] 1 All E.R. 430 (H.L.). You can't get much deeper than that, inadvertent as it may have been.
• "And some people would sign a contract even if ' THIS IS A SWINDLE' were embossed across its top in electric pink." ("Contract as a Thing" (1970), 19 Am. U.L. Rev. 131 at 157). If only that were a statutory requirement for contracts, I could at least have a sense of humour about the really horrible ones, instead of getting my indignant self in a twist.

Egregious will come later, don't worry. There's no shortage of that in the courts.