Lord Denning

Famous Denning Openings:

"Broadchalke is one of the most pleasing villages in England. Old Herbert Bundy, the defendant, was a farmer there. His home was at Yew Tree Farm. It went back for 300 years. His family had been there for generations. It was his only asset. But he did a very foolish thing. He mortgaged it to the bank."

---Lloyds Bank v. Bundy [1973] 3 All ER 757

"In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short . . . [y]et now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there anymore . . . [h]e has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built . . . a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket."

---Miller v. Jackson (1977) Q.B. 966, 976

"This is a case of a barmaid who was badly bitten by a big dog"

---Cummings v. Granger (1977) 1 All E.R. 104, 106

"It happened on April 19, 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent"

---Hinz v. Berry (1970) 2 Q.B. 40, 42

"Old Peter Beswick was a coal merchant in Eccles, Lancashire. He had no business premises. All he had was a lorry, scales, and weights. He used to
take the lorry to the yard of the National Coal Board, where he bagged coal and took it round to his customers in the neighbourhood. His nephew, John Joseph Beswick, helped him in his business. In March 1962, old Peter Beswick and his wife were both over 70. He had had his leg amputated and was not in good health. The nephew was anxious to get hold of the business before the old man died. So they went to a solicitor, Mr. Ashcroft, who drew up an agreement for them"

--- Beswick v. Beswick (1966) Ch. 538


Famous Denning Quotes:

Regarding Anton Piller Injunction [civil search warrant]:

"It does not authorize the plaintiff’s solicitors or anyone else to enter the defendants’ premises against their will. It does not authorize the breaking down of any doors, nor the slipping in by a back door, nor getting in by an open door or window . . . The plaintiffs must get the defendants’ permission. But it does do this: It brings pressure on the defendants to give permission. It does more. It actually orders them to give permission – with, I suppose, the result that if they do not give permission, they are guilty of contempt of court."

---Anton Piller KG v. Manufacturing Processes Ltd., [1976] 1 All E.R. 779 (C.A.)

"What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both."

---Packer v. Packer [1953] 2 AER l27

"No customer in a thousand ever read the conditions [on the back of a parking lot ticket]. If he had stopped to do so, he would have missed the train or the boat.

None of those cases has any application to a ticket which is issued by an automatic machine. The customer pays his money and gets a ticket. He cannot refuse it. He cannot get his money back. He may protest to the machine, even swear at it; but it will remain unmoved."

---Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Ltd [1971] 1 All ER 686

"I agree that the more unreasonable a clause is, the greater the notice which must be given of it. Some clauses which I have seen would need to be printed in red ink on the face of the document with a red hand pointing to it before the notice could be held to be sufficient."

--- Spurling (J.) Ltd. v. Bradshaw [1956] 1 W.L.R. 461, [1956] All E.R. 121 (C.A.)