Garrett v Halton Borough Council; Myatt v National Coal Board (November 2006, Benjamin Williams)

Articles8th November 2006

This paper was originally presented at a seminar in Chambers in November 2006.

“‘This is like déjà vu all over again’ said Yogi Berra, the great baseball catcher, in one of sport’s most celebrated quotations.  It is a bon mot which may have sprung to many practitioner’s minds when reading the decisions of the Court of Appeal in Garrett v Halton Borough Council and Myatt v National Coal Board, [2006] EWCA Civ 1017 & 1018, which revisited the question of defective CFAs.  Many had thought that all that could be said about that subject had already been stated by the court in Hollins v Russell [2003] EWCA Civ 718, [2003] 1 WLR 2487.  Yet if one reads the press releases of the Law Society and APIL, the effect of the Garrett & Myatt cases is, de facto, to reverse the earlier decision…”