ABSTRACT
Lord Reid: Frustration has often been said to depend on adding a term to the contract by implication: for example, Lord Loreburn in FA Tamplin SS Co Ltd v Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Products Co Ltd, after quoting language of Lord Blackburn, said: ‘That seems to me another way of saying that from the nature of the contract it cannot be supposed the parties, as reasonable men, intended it to be binding on them under such altered conditions. Were the altered conditions such that, had they thought of them, they would have taken their chance of them, or such that as sensible men they would have said “if that happens, of course, it is all over between us”? What, in fact, was the true meaning of the contract? Since the parties have not provided for the contingency, ought a court to say it is obvious they would have treated the thing as at an end?’
