A Catalogue Description

In those days – the late 1960ies – my office was on the first floor of the Victoria University of Wellington’s 19th century building. To get to it from the lobby, I had to enter the corridor leading to the library and pass the guard who asked you not to take your bag into the library. In my case, this rule did not apply. I suspected that my office used to be the librarian’s room. Still, for the last ten years it had been the office of the Head of the English and New Zealand Law Department. I got its use when I was constituted a professor at Wellington’s University. ...

Some two months later, Robert consulted me on the draft of his statement of claim, that is, the document in which the party that brings the action – the plaintiff or claimant – narrates his case. To my dismay, Robert had decided to proceed under both counts. He proposed to allege that the sales house had breached a duty imposed under the Sale of Goods Act. In other words, the auctioneers had given an incorrect description of the ‘goods’. As an alternative, Robert alleged that the statement respecting the mare’s condition, namely her being with fowl, constituted a negligent misrepresentation on the part of Douglas brown and that the sale house was liable together with him. ...

For a while, I heard no more about the case and, actually, it skipped my mind. Eventually, I recalled it when I walked up the stairs leading to the library mezzanine. Out of sheer curiosity I rang Robert up when I was back in my room. To my surprise, he had not changed his statement of claim. Further, he had no raised a count based on a mistake. “But, Robert, haven’t you acquired a copy of the certificate about the mare?” ...

The trial, which took place some two months later on, demonstrated that, in the case in question, Robert was no match for Thomas. Jack Smith, the plaintiff, had to be the first to present himself as a witness. Robert asked him the usual questions respecting his background, his experience in horse breeding and his reliance on the catalogue. He ended his examination by a set of simple questions. “So why did you rely on the John Brown’s statement?” ...

Things came to their head a few days later on. One the senior professors came over to my room. Lawrence Gent was known as a fine courtroom advocate. He was as excellent when it came to legal points as when a case turned on the facts. At one stage, we appointed him dean but his commitments at court prevented him from running the faculty efficiently and so resigned. All of us treated him as the grand old man of the law school. His visits to the rooms of other colleagues were scarce. ...