A Public Lecture presented by Professor Andrew Robertson
Melbourne University School of Law

In the law of contract questions of risk allocation properly turn, where possible, on interpretation of the agreement. This lecture will explore the limits of that approach. It will do so by considering two doctrines that lie at the boundaries of contract interpretation: the implication of terms in fact and the remoteness principle. Both doctrines have been commonly understood as exercises in gap filling, but in two influential judgments Lord Hoffmann sought to recast them as interpretative principles (Attorney General of Belize v Belize Telecom Ltd [2009] 1 WLR 1988 and Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (‘The Achilleas’) [2009] 1 AC 61). It will be argued that the implication of terms in fact can properly be regarded as an interpretative exercise, but the same cannot be said of the remoteness doctrine. The lecture will also consider why this distinction matters.

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A leading scholar on private law issues, Professor Andrew Robertson was appointed to a chair in law at Melbourne University in 2006. His scholarship focuses on the law and theory of obligations, particularly equitable estoppel, the law of contract and the law of negligence. His research on estoppel explores the basis of liability in equitable estoppel, its place within the law of obligations and its remedial consequences. He is co-author of Principles of Contract Law (4th ed, 2012) and Contract: Cases and Materials (12th ed, 2012), and has co-edited several collections of essays on the law of obligations and private law theory, including: The Goals of Private Law (2009), Rights and Private Law (2011) and Divergences in Private Law (forthcoming in 2015). He was Walter S Owen Visiting Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia in 2014 and was a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore in 2016.

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Sponsors: Victoria University of Wellington Law Review and The New Zealand Law Foundation.

(Professor Andrew Robertson’s Wellington Lecture is open to the public. It is being hosted in conjunction with the inaugural New Zealand Private Law Scholars' Roundtable, a series of events jointly chaired by Graeme Austin (Victoria University) and Jessica Palmer (Otago University).)

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