NON-PAYMENT AND REPUDIATORY BREACH

Alan Auld Associates Ltd v Rick Pollard Associates [2008] EWCA Civ 655; [2008] BLR 419

In Alan Auld Associates Ltd v Rick Pollard Associates [2008] EWCA Civ 655; [2008] BLR 419 the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge had been entitled to conclude that the claimant’s repeated failure to pay invoices amounted to a repudiatory breach of contract which entitled the defendant to bring the contract to an end. This was not, however, a case in which time of payment had been agreed to be of the essence of the contract. But the breaches of contract were held to be ‘substantial, persistent and cynical’. They had occurred over a period of time and the defendant was entitled to assume that the delays in making payment would continue into the future. On this basis it was held that the defendant was entitled to bring the contract to an end on account of the claimant’s repudiatory breach of contract.