Explanatory Notes
The purpose of this explanatory notes is to provide Quanter Ltd legal aid, in which will advise them on how to deal with situations dealing with the following exemption clause. For example if a previous consumer of the laser war game attempted to sue the company for loss or damage to their personal belongings, these notes should help provide legal assistance for Quanter Ltd to deal with issues such as these. Firstly it is ideal that all Quanter Ltd staff should fully understand what is an exemption clause? And what is the purpose of it in order to avoid the possibility to be sued.
An exemption clause is a term of a contract that seeks to either limit or exclude liability for breaches of the contract. They act as contractual defences .
In order for an exemption clause to be fully incorporated into the Quanter Ltd contract, or for any contract for that matter, there are a number of essential elements that each contract must undertake in order to make the contract lawful an adequate e.g. incorporation by signature, incorporation by reasonable notice and incorporation by a previous course of dealing.
When a participant wishes to engage in the laser war game activities, they are firstly giving a contract in which the game player is intended to sign. The contents of the contract become terms of the contract regardless of whether they have been read or understood, this principle is known as incorporation by signature, which came from the case in L’estrange v Graucob (1934) - This is the case involving the defective cigarette vending machine. Once the offeree has provided there signature, they are automatically bound to the rules of that contract, irrespective of whether they have read the terms or not. However the incorporation by signature rule does not apply if there is a misrepresentation as to the nature of the document signed, such as is the case of Curtis v Chemical Cleaning and Dyeing Co . In order to overcome this issue, all Quanter Ltd staff must be aware of the contract itself and make sure that all the terms and conditions are accurate, they must also attempt to ensure that every offeree must fully read and understand the contract before signing, in order to not be liable if sued in the future. This too is similar to the Wilton v Farnworth case, as it shows that the offeree cannot participate in Laser war games activities without signing the contract, thus providing the impression that the client had read the terms, even if they did not understand, therefore ignoring the misrepresentation, and legally binding themselves to the contract regardless.
When dealing with incorporation by reasonable notice, if there are separate written terms presented at the time at contract was made. In order for the separate terms to be valid, the recipient must have reasonable notice of them before signing the contract.
Timing is also essential, the notice of the separate terms must be given at or before the time when the contract is...
