Clifford Chance
No Oral Modification Clauses Upheld
17 May 2018
The Supreme Court has decided that the commercial desirability of no oral variation (or modification) clauses in contracts overrides any conceptual difficulty in their application. If parties include such a clause in their contract, then the contract can only be varied in writing – though the Court left open the possibility that if the parties act on an oral variation, they might be estopped from later denying the variation's validity.
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