CORONATION CONTRACTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 71, 23 February 1937, Page 8

CORONATION CONTRACTS.

The constitutional crisis which culminated in the abdication of King Edward VIII caused business men in Britain a great deal of anxiety. The question was this : What will be tlie effect on pending contracts, since the Coronation of Edward VIII is not to take place V Coronation orders have played some part in recent trade revival, but since King Edward is not to be crowned can buyers legally be compelled to pay for the goods or services which they had ordered ? The legal position appears to be that if a contract is rouble on the basis that a certain contemplated event will happen, and that event, without any fault on the part of either contracting party, is postponed the contract is discharged from the moment when the postponement is announced. There is, apparently, adequate authority for that view in a series of cases which arose from the postpone ment owing to the illness of Edward VII, of his Coronation. People had let windows and stands to others who wished to see the procession, and the Courts held that the contracts were discharged when it was announced that the procession would be postponed. But some curious situations arose. If, for example, a person hiring a window had paid in advance, he could not recover his money; but, if he had not paid before the announcement he need not pay at all. The same principles would seem to apply though the Coronation of another King is to be held on the exact day provisionally fixed for Edward’s Coronation. It would not be the same Coronation as the one with reference to which people and contracted. Those who have ordered goods on which the King’s picture appears and have ordered them expressly for the Coronation are absolved from their contracts. Those who have bought ordinary goods in anticipation that Coronation activities would bring increased business cannot cancel their contracts, and as a Coronation is to be held they are not likely to seek to repudiate contracts.