Promissory estoppel

The basic principles of contract →Go uptown Formation: capacity and authority · representation · misrepresentation · offer · acceptance · consideration · intention to create legal relations · agreement to agree · privity of contract oral vs written contract · principal · agent Interpretation and change: governing law · mistake · implied term · amendment · assignment · novation Performance: force majeure · promise · waiver · warranty · covenant · sovereign immunity · illegality · severability · good faith · commercially reasonable manner · commercial imperative · indemnity · guarantee Breach: breach · repudiation · causation · remoteness of damage · direct loss · consequential loss · foreseeability · damages · contractual negligence · process agent Remedies: damages · adequacy of damages ·equitable remedies · injunction · specific performance · limited recourse · rescission · estoppel · concurrent liability Not contracts: Restitution — quasi-contract — quasi-agency Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Contract Tort Restitution Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A principle of equity that if you have made a promise, without consideration, but in circumstances that you know the other person relies on to its detriment, you can’t then go back on that promise, at least not retrospectively. You will be “estopped” (or, in modern language, “stopped”) from doing so. First articulated by Lance Cairns in Hughes v Metropolitan Railway, but resuscitated and given new life in the seventies by a spry young jurist by the name of Denning in the celebrated case of Central London Property Trust Ltd v High Trees House Ltd.

See also

• Estoppel
• Waiver by estoppel
• Hughes v Metropolitan Railway
• Central London Property Trust Ltd v High Trees House Ltd