Template:No oral modification capsule

“No oral modification” is a self-contradictory stricture on an amendment agreement, until 2018 understood by all to be silly fluff put in a contract to appease the lawyers and guarantee them an annuity of tedious work. But as of 2018 it is no longer, as it ought to be, a vacuous piece of legal flannel — thanks to what we impolitely consider to be an equally vacuous piece of legal reasoning by no less an eminence than Lord Sumption of the Supreme Court in Rock Advertising Limited v MWB Business Exchange Centres Limited if one says one cannot amend a contract except in writing then one will be held to that — even if on the clear evidence the parties to the contract later agreed otherwise. This is rather like sober me being forced to act on promises that drunk me made a handsome rechtsanwältin during a heated argument about theoretical physics in a nasty bar in Hammersmith after too many cocktails at the end of year do, when not even that elegant German attorney wants me to go through with it.