Cases - Moresk Cleaners Ltd v Hicks

Record details

Name
Moresk Cleaners Ltd v Hicks
Date
[1966]
Citation
2 Lloyd's Rep 338
Legislation

Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977

Keywords
Contract administration
Summary

The plaintiffs employed the defendant architects to design an extension to its laundry business. The design of the building was found to be defective. However, the architects had purported to delegate the design to a third party and argued that it should not be liable because it was an implied term of its employment that it could delegate specialised design tasks to qualified subcontractors or alternatively that it had implied authority to act as the plaintiffs' agent to employ the third party.

These arguments were rejected. The architect had no power to delegate its design duties and no implied authority to employ the third party to design the building. A building owner who entrusts the task of designing a building to an architect is entitled to look to that architect to see that the building is properly designed. The architect has no power whatever to delegate his duty to anybody else.

As to the alternative argument, it was essential that, if the architects wished to employ a third party to do its work, it should obtain the permission of the building owner before doing so. In the absence of such permission, there was no implied authority to engage a third party as the plaintiffs' agent.

Consideration was given to the question of what an architect or other consultant should do where he was asked to carry out specialist or cutting-edge work which was beyond his capabilities. It was held that if the consultant was not able to do the work himself he had three courses open to him:

  1. he could inform the employer that he was unqualified and reject the job;
  2. he could inform the employer that he was unqualified and request the employer to employ a suitable specialist to carry out the aspect of the work he could not do himself;
  3. he could employ a specialist himself. While doing so would not absolve the consultant of liability to the employer for the work, he would have the reassurance of knowing that if he acts upon the advice given by the specialist and it turns out to be wrong, the specialist will owe the same duty to him as he, the consultant, owes to the employer.