Talk:Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co

Expansion
I've updated this page to include much more. For anyone reading it for the purposes of study, the most important part is, of course, the Court of Appeal's judgment.  Wik idea  20:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Elements of Contract
It isn't quite correct to say that the court found that the parties had an intent to be bound. It was evident to the court that Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. never had any intention of paying the reward to anyone. The court did find that Carbolic had intended the ad to be a promise rather than mere "puffing". But it was a promise that Carbolic never intended to honor when they made it, and they did not believe that the promise as stated in the ad would be legally binding. SnapLaw (talk) 07:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes it is! The deposit of £1000 was said to be evidence of the parties' seriousness. This distinguished the advertisement from mere marketing puff. "Intention to be legally bound" is a term of art, which doesn't depend on what the parties subjectively intended, but descriptive of the court's policy to keep the law out of the "private sphere" and presume that parties have an intention to be legally bound within the commercial sphere.  Wik idea  12:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly. The intention to create legal relations is always judged objectively (as are most things in contract law). In this case, disregarding what the company claimed later and in court, two of the three CA judges (Lindley and Smith, I think, I had to use this case in a moot a week ago) said that the deposit of the £1000 to show the company's sincerity was objective evidence of an intention to go through with paying compensation should it not work. Ironholds (talk) 12:42, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Use of quotes
The editor who originally added the quotations to this article has reverted the addition of a quotefarm tag intended to highlight their overuse. I'm sure I've had this discussion before, but there is absolutely nothing about this case which makes it uniquely impossible to properly describe it without 50% of the article body consisting of quoted text. I'm not prepared to accept that this problem will address itself without a cleanup tag to bring notice to it, so unless there's a better reason for the present state of affairs than "it's a useful study guide" (which is not in our remit) then the article should be re-tagged in the first instances and then reworked to present the subject from secondary sources. It is easy to write articles on legal cases simply by wrapping court documents in a little context, but that does not mean we should assume that this is the best way to present such cases. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you think the article should be trying to do. Don't you agree that most people reading this will be studying the subject? Also, I don't know what harm a longer set of quotes in an important article has. If it's too long, which parts of the judgments would you suggest keeping?  Wik idea  07:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Second Chris's point; as I've tried to explain to you, Wikipedia's format and policies do not conform to the idea that it should primarily be a reference work for students and professionals. "Most" people, yes; and everyone else will be unable to understand what is going on. As context, I was having a long chat with an ArbCom member - and one who isn't a lawyer - on Sunday about Carlill; this case isn't just of interest to lawyers and law students. Ironholds (talk) 05:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Already know what you think.  Wik idea  08:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And now that a second user has told you that WP is not a dedicated legal resource, do you believe that's the truth yet? Ironholds (talk) 08:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And I'll second too. Even though those in the public domain, no other expression comes to mind but "overboard". Quoting (almost?) the entire opinion is just ridiculous. At most one or two lines can do. We hardly ever quote more than a few lines at a time in any given case article (see e.g. Plessy v. Ferguson, a case from the same period also of great importance), and I completely fail to see why this one should be an exception. Circéus (talk) 12:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In France, you only have judgments that last a page or two anyway!  Wik idea  13:06, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What the **** does the length of French judgements have to do with this?? Circéus (talk) 13:44, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a pity that such an important case has been hijacked by one user's misguided belief that recopying large chunks from judgments actually helps the reader's understanding. A few lines of analysis together with a link to Bailii is all that is required. Lamberhurst (talk) 18:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikidea, perhaps you could try taking these opinions on board? Lamberhurst, Circeus, Chris Cunningham and myself all say that Wikipedia is not a legal resource and is not improved by copying and pasting judgments, something that backs up our manual of style. Are you prepared to accept you might be wrong? Ironholds (talk) 22:32, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As an aside, if you need to have the whole judgement easily available, well, that is what Wikisource is for. Circéus (talk) 22:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you think the article should be trying to do. Don't you agree that most people reading this will be studying the subject? Also, I don't know what harm a longer set of quotes in an important article has. If it's too long, which parts of the judgments would you suggest keeping?  Wik idea  07:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Most people will; is that an excuse to exclude everyone else? Articles on law are not dedicated to legal students; WP:MOSLAW says it, for example. If you want sections to cut out, how about the complete original research and synthesis that makes up the comments between quotes, and everything not to do with the "mere puff" and the judges' reasons for deciding that it wasn't a mere puff. Despite what you normally claim, it is far easier to understand a third-party referenced summary of a judgment than it is to understand the original thing in its entirety. Ironholds (talk) 23:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * None of the text recited here is necessary. In fact, use of quotations should - in my view - be restricted to loci classici. For example - Wigram V.-C.'s discussion of res judicata in Henderson v Henderson. Far better to trim Carlill down to what exactly features in the case's headnote plus a brief résumé of the facts. Lamberhurst (talk) 08:26, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Update
Based on the above discussion, I've re-tagged the article. I would encourage editors who think that a dedicated cleanup tag for this type of thing (rather than using the not quite perfect quotefarm) to ping me with their thoughts. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:04, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Update of update, and exhortation
Since the above note, user:Wikidea has removed the quotefarm tag again. I agree with those who argue that the included quotes are too copious, including an enormous amount of verbiage that, while important in a judicial opinion, whose author cannot risk being misconstrued, is inessential to a student seeking an encyclopedia-level overview of the subject. I was going to add the tag back, but to be honest I don't want to provoke an edit war, and would certainly prefer to proceed with user:Wikidea's cooperation; that editor has shown an enthusiasm and expertise on this subject which is a pearl of great price in our endeavor.

I suggest that editors who have time to spend on this, rather than peevishly retagging the article, actually make changes in the desired direction. Edit out and replace by ellipses passages you deem to be inessential for our purposes. Then, if anyone disputes the inessentialness of the removed material, we will have something substantive to argue about, namely, does some specific passage really need to be in the article?

To user:Wikidea, I offer the reassurance that the entire opinion is one click away at WikiSource, and any student who needs to see the full text will surely not be dissuaded by that extra click. Also, I note that our article on George Eliot's Middlemarch does not contain the entire text, even though that text will surely be of interest to any student researching the subject; summarization is not always an evil in an encyclopedia, and is often a virtue. ACW (talk) 19:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

£100, 100ℓ., 100l.
These three ways of expressing the sum of one hundred pounds sterling are used randomly and interchangeably throughout the article. How about some consistency? What's wrong with £100? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 08:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, especially as the original quotes all use £ sign. So I've gone through and changed all that I can find to £.  I can only assume the original editor was working with a keyboard that did not have £ key. MidlandLinda (talk) 15:13, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Almost certainly, the reason that "100l" was used was because that is how it appears in the law report, 1893 2 QB 256! Arrivisto (talk) 13:56, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

'Show' v 'Shew'
Is there a reason why 'show' and 'showing' etc. have at least in some places been replaced with 'shew' and 'shewing' etc.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.197.98.125 (talk) 16:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * All those instances are in quotes, as that was how the word was spelled at the time.-- Auric    talk  21:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Too long
In my view this article is much too long and needs some radical editing & pruning. Also I feel that the Hugh Collins quotation is absurd, applying as it does 20th century sophistry to a classic Victorian case. Arrivisto (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

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Cross Reference to Hawkins v. McGee?
In the See Also section, it might be nice to put in a cross-reference to Hawkins v. McGee. This is another famous, slightly oddball contract case that Law Students often study as their first example, especially in the US. 165.225.110.193 (talk) 07:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

A case where carlill rule of justice was distinguished
I need answers 105.234.164.5 (talk) 05:43, 16 May 2022 (UTC)