In the Court of Appeal on December 16, before the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Farwell, and Lord Justice Hamilton, the action of Roberts v. Gray was an application by the defendant for judgment or a new trial on appeal from verdict and judgment at trial before the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury.
The action was for damages for alleged breach of contract, as reported in The Billiard Monthly of March and May last. It appeared that in 1910 the plaintiff was in Australia, and on May 12, 1910, an agreement was entered into between him and the defendant for a tour round the world. The defendant had already agreed to play in England from October, 1910, to the end of March, 1911, and the agreement was therefore only to come into force on April 2, 1911, and was to last for 18 months from that date. On April 20, 1911, the defendant by his solicitor repudiated the agreement, and the plaintiff therefore claimed damages for breach of contract.
The defendant put in a number of defences, including a plea that he was born on March 28, 1891, and was an infant at the time of his signing the contract. This was not denied by the plaintiff, but he contended that as the contract was for the infant's benefit he was bound by it.
Another defence was that the plaintiff had induced the defendant to enter into the contract by a misrepresentation that his obligation to play billiards with bonzoline balls expired on March 31, 1911.
The jury found that the plaintiff did not make the false representation alleged, and assessed the plaintiff's damages at £1,500.
A legal argument followed as to the effect of the defendant's infancy on his position, and the Lord Chief Justice held that the contract of May 12, 1910, was a contract of employment, and that, as it was for the benefit of the defendant, it would bind him, although he was an infant when he signed the contract. And he entered judgment for the plaintiff on all the issues.
The defendant appealed, and in the present action the Master of the Rolls, in the course of his judgment, said that the appeal had been ably argued by Mr. Matthews, but, having heard all that he had urged upon the Court he (the Master of the Rolls) was bound to say that he saw no reason to differ from the view taken by the Lord Chief Justice. The attention of the Court had been called to a great number of cases dealing with the extent to which an infant might be bound by a contract made by him during his infancy. He did not mean to say that there had been no development of the law on the subject since the date when the earliest cases were decided, but it was important to remember that as early as Lord Coke it was laid down that the doctrine that an infant's contract for necessaries was binding upon him applied not only to a contract for bread and cheese and clothes, but also to a contract for education and instruction.
That had been construed by the Court of Appeal in Walter v. Everard (1891, 2 Q.B., 369), in which case Lord Justice Fry had said that education must not be taken in the narrow sense as being education to enable a man to work to maintain himself as an artisan, but applied to education and instruction suitable to the social state in which the infant might expect to find himself when he became adult.
Then what was the effect of a contract entered into by an infant in respect of necessaries including instruction? It had been argued that such a contract might be good so far as the consideration was executed, but that it could lot be enforced so far as it was executory. So far as his Lordship was concerned he was not aware of any authority for that proposition, and he thought that the Court was bound by the decision in Clements v. London and North-Western Railway (1894, 2 Q.B., 482).
In that case the Court considered the contract as a whole. Lord Esher said:—"If upon consideration of the whole agreement there is a manifest advantage to the infant, he cannot avoid it." Lord Justice Kay said:—"I agree with the Divisional Court that, on examination of the whole contract, it is for the benefit of the infant, although it contains terms that, standing alone, would not be for his advantage. There is, therefore, no right on the part of the infant to repudiate the contract." Lord Justice A. L. Smith quoted with approval the judgment of Lord Justice Fry in De Francesco v. Barnum (45 Ch.D., 430). "There is another exception which is based on the desirableness of infants employing themselves in labour; therefore, where you get a contract for labour and you have a remuneration of wages, that contract, I think, must be taken to be, prima facie, binding upon an infant." Prima facie, the contract was binding upon the infant. If the contract fell within the class to which the doctrine of necessaries applied, and on the whole was for the benefit of the infant, there was no foundation for the argument that the infant was not liable for damages. The Court had acted on that view in Gadd v. Thompson (1911, 1 K.B., 304), where an infant had been restrained by injunction from committing a breach of a covenant in an apprenticeship deed.
It only remained, therefore, to consider what was the nature of the contract. Could it be doubted that playing in company with so noted a player as the plaintiff was instruction of the most valuable kind for an infant who desired to make his living by billiard playing? The Lord Chief Justice had held that the contract was capable of being enforced as a contract for necessaries. He (the Master of the Rolls) entirely agreed with that construction of the contract looked at by itself. The Lord Chief Justice then had held that the case came within the doctrine laid down in Coke on Littelton (172A) and in Clements v.
London and North-Western Railway (supra), and had given judgment for the plaintiff against the infant. He (the Master of the Rolls) thought that judgment was perfectly right, and that the appeal must be dismissed with costs.
The Lords Justices also delivered judgments dismissing the appeal.