If It Ain´t Broke Don´t Fix It - Contract Interpretation After Chartbrook v Persimmon

The recent House of Lords decision in Chartbrook v Persimmon, with Lord Hoffman delivering the leading judgment, confirmed that the rules for contractual interpretation remain:

1. what a reasonable person, having all the background knowledge which would have been available to the parties, would have understood them to, by using the language in the contract, mean.
   
2. pre-contract negotiations are inadmissible for the purpose of interpreting a contract.
   

It is a little unusual that a case which decides nothing new creates so much interest in the legal community. It might be thought that the reason Chartbrook v Persimmon has done so may be due to the fact it is the last decision of Lord Hoffman sitting on the House of Lords Judicial Committee. However, that would be to vastly underestimate the usefulness of the case and the comprehensive review of the rules undertaken by Lord Hoffman.