Cases - Spiro v Lintern

Record details

Name

Spiro v Lintern

Date

[1973]

Citation

3 AII ER 391

Keywords

Estate agency

Summary

The plaintiff believed that the defendant's wife had authority to authorise an agent to enter into a contract of sale of a house. The defendant, the sole beneficial owner of the house, had not given his wife such authority (he had instructed her to put it in the hands of a firm of estate agents who supposed she was the owner) but at no time did he inform the plaintiff of this fact. Instead, he allowed the plaintiff to continue to believe he had a binding contract to buy the house by permitting him to incur the expense of employing an architect and a builder to carry out work on the house to remedy damp. The Court of Appeal held that the defendant was estopped by his negligent conduct from denying the contract of sale.

'Where a man is under a duty - that is, a legal duty - to disclose some fact to another and he does not do so, the other is entitled to assume the non-existence of the fact.'

(Note: No ratification was possible in this case as the owner of the house was an undisclosed principal.)