English Law Basics: Statute, Case Law and the Courts

1.1English law in one paragraph

English law comes from two places. Parliament makes statute (an Act), and judges make case law in their judgments. Built up case by case, those rules are the common law. A court applies both: the statute gives the rule, and the cases show how a court reads it. This workbook follows one dispute. A seller of ice-cream machines from abroad faces its first English claim, and your firm answers six questions for it.

1.2Where to find the law

Acts are all on legislation.gov.uk, free. The revised text there builds in later changes, and the page says if any are not yet made. That is where you read a section before you cite it. A note that quotes a statute names the section, and says where you read it.

Find Case Law, the National Archives’ free site, holds judgments from about 2001. Older cases are in the law reports, which your firm’s library holds. A case has a name, a year and a court. Chapter 2 shows how to read one, and which judgments bind.

Four courts matter for a dispute like this one. The County Court and the High Court hear claims, and the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court hear appeals. This claim would start in the County Court.

This workbook covers England and Wales only. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own courts and partly different law.

1.3The case: twelve machines and one unpaid invoice

Frescalva is a family company near Porto that makes batch freezers for ice-cream parlours. In England it sells them through a small company it owns, a warehouse that sells from stock. The contract is with that small company, and that matters later. Frescalva is the name this workbook uses for both companies.

Duarte runs both companies. In March 2027 he quoted twelve machines at £10,000 each to Marrowby, an ice-cream chain.

Frescalva sent its Conditions of Sale and a data sheet with the quote. Marrowby sent back its own order form, with its own terms on the back. Frescalva then sent an acknowledgement, and attached its terms again.

The machines left the warehouse in May. Marrowby paid the first two invoices, £40,000 each. In July four of the twelve stopped. Their compressors failed after eight weeks, in Marrowby’s best month. In one machine the mix thawed and ran out over the counter.

Frescalva said parts would take three weeks, so Marrowby had its own engineer fit new compressors. Marrowby’s solicitors wrote in August. They refused to pay the third and last invoice, £40,000, and claimed £90,000 for the repairs, lost profit and the counter. Clause 9 of the Conditions cuts such a claim down. It allows no claim after 7 days, no lost profit, and nothing above the price of the goods.

There is a second problem. Dean was Frescalva’s sales agent until March. In June he emailed its customers, Marrowby among them, offering a rival’s machines below the dealer prices. Only he and Duarte held the discount sheet.

Duarte wrote to your firm in September with six questions. These are the people in the case:

Fallowden’s solicitors run the matter. They instruct a barrister (counsel) only on a hard point or for a hearing.

Both forms choose English law and courts, so nobody argues about the country. The first question is whose terms apply, and it turns on which form came last. The quote carried the Conditions in one line, and the acknowledgement carried them again:

Frescalva says that line and the acknowledgement put its terms in the contract. Marrowby says its order form is the contract, because it never signed Frescalva’s papers.

1.4What each side wants, and the road to the advice letter

Marrowby wants:

• not to pay for machines that failed in its best month
• its own order form to be the contract

Frescalva wants:

• its £40,000
• its good name, and its customer list back
• not to face a foreign court it does not understand
• good faith in business, as it would expect at home

Neither needs the other now. So the money and the cost of a trial will decide what each side does.

Duarte’s email asks six questions, and one more at the end. Each has a chapter, and the road runs from his email to the advice letter. The email, the quote, the forms, your notes and the letter all sit in the Advice File.

This is a map for a first matter, not an exam course.

1.5Your job

Before any law, build the chronology. Naomi reads it before anything else, because the order of events shapes every answer.

• Put every event in one table, month by month, from the quote to the client’s email.
• Beside each event, name the paper that proves it and the tab that holds it.
• Mark what a paper shows and what only the client has told you.
• Naomi wants the table before you open a statute or a case.

A chronology with a gap is a question for the client, never a guess.