Baby M was the pseudonym used in the case In re Baby M, 537 A.2d 1227, 109 N.J. 396 for the infant whose legal parentage was in question.
Central London Property Trust Ltd v High Trees House Ltd [1947] KB 130 is a famous English contract law decision in the High Court. It reaffirmed and extended the doctrine of promissory estoppel in contract law in England and Wales. However, the most significant part of the judgment is obiter dicta as it relates to hypothetical facts; that is, the landlord did not seek repayment of the full wartime rent.
Joint wills and mutual wills are closely related terms used in the law of wills to describe two types of testamentary writing that may be executed by a married couple to ensure that their property is disposed of identically. Neither should be confused with mirror wills which means two separate, identical wills, which may or may not also be mutual wills.
In law, to distinguish a case means a court decides the holding or legal reasoning of a precedent case that will not apply due to materially different facts between the two cases. Two formal constraints constrain the later court: the expressed relevant factors in the ratio of the earlier case must be recited or their equivalent recited or the earlier case makes an exception for their application in the circumstances otherwise it envisages, and the ruling in the later case must not expressly doubt (criticise) the result reached in the precedent case.
Balfour v Balfour [1919] 2 KB 571 is a leading English contract law case. It held that there is a rebuttable presumption against an intention to create a legally enforceable agreement when the agreement is domestic in nature.
Canada (AG) v Lavell, [1974] S.C.R. 1349, was a landmark 5–4 Supreme Court of Canada decision holding that Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act did not violate the respondents' right to "equality before the law" under Section 1 (b) of the Canadian Bill of Rights. The two respondents, Lavell and Bédard, had alleged that the impugned section was discriminatory under the Canadian Bill of Rights by virtue of the fact that it deprived Indian women of their status for marrying a non-Indian, but not Indian men.
Beswick v Beswick[1967] UKHL 2, [1968] AC 58 was a landmark English contract law case on privity of contract and specific performance. The House of Lords, overruling the decision of Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal, ruled that a person who was not party to a contract had no independent standing to sue to enforce it, even if the contract was clearly intended for their benefit.
Rose & Frank Co v JR Crompton & Bros Ltd [1924] is a leading decision on English contract law, regarding the intention to create legal relations in commercial arrangements. In the Court of Appeal, Atkin LJ delivered an important dissenting judgment which was upheld by the House of Lords.
Consideration is a concept of English common law and is a necessity for simple contracts but not for special contracts. The concept has been adopted by other common law jurisdictions.
Lloyds Bank plc v Rosset[1990] UKHL 14 is an English land law, trusts law and matrimonial law case. It specifically deals with the translation into money of physical contributions from a cohabitee or spouse, under which its principles have been largely superseded.
Intention to create legal relations, otherwise an "intention to be legally bound", is a doctrine used in contract law, particularly English contract law and related common law jurisdictions.
Merritt v Merritt [1970] EWCA Civ 6 is an English contract law case, on the matter of creating legal relations. While under the principles laid out in Balfour v Balfour, domestic agreements between spouses are rarely legally enforceable, this principle was rebutted where two spouses who formed an agreement over their matrimonial home were not on good terms.
Street v Mountford[1985] UKHL 4 is an English land law case from the House of Lords. It set out principles to determine whether someone who occupied a property had a tenancy, or only a licence. This mattered for the purpose of statutory tenant rights to a reasonable rent, and had a wider significance as a lease had "proprietary" status and would bind third parties.
Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd[2008] UKHL 55 is a House of Lords case in English land law and relates to proprietary estoppel in the multi-property developer context. The court of final appeal awarded the project manager £150,000 on a quantum meruit basis for unjust enrichment because Yeoman's Row had received the benefit of his services without paying for that. The court refused to find or acknowledge a binding contract, prior arrangement with a third party or promise, overturning a £2m award on the basis of a possible lien arising from a promise over the property. The court found a non-binding agreement in principle, entirely subject to the owner's final say to take into account for example their view of the market; this was the basis on the facts on which the parties were proceeding.
Marguerite Scypion, also known in court files as Marguerite, was an African-Natchez woman, born into slavery in St. Louis, then located in French Upper Louisiana. She was held first by Joseph Tayon and later by Jean Pierre Chouteau, one of the most powerful men in the city.
Bristol & West Building Society v Henning [1985] EWCA Civ 6 is an English land law case that holds a person can consent to give up the right to an overriding interest in land, that will bind third parties, such as banks, that purchase a property. Although dealing with unregistered land, it is equally applicable in the case of registered land and now falls under the Land Registration Act 2002.
Link Lending Ltd v Bustard [2010] EWCA Civ 424 is an English land law case, concerning actual occupation in registered land and the vulnerable, in this case a defrauded person suffering from a mental syndrome who would have had little concept of what was occurring.
Welch v Jess [1976] NZ recent Law 185 is a reported precedent case in New Zealand on intention to create legal relations in the law of contract.
Macleod v Macleod [2008] UKPC 64 was a judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in an appeal originating from the Isle of Man. It made clear that postnuptial agreements in the Isle of Man cannot be varied by a court other than for sufficient policy reasons. Although technically only applying to Manx postnuptial agreements, the judgment is treated with authority in the United Kingdom.
In the English system of common law, judges have devised a number of mechanisms to allow them to cope with precedent decisions.
