Court Of Appeal Finds That Deleted Words May Be Used As An Aid
To Construction
Narandas-Girdhar and Another v Bradstock (2016)
Although the Court of Appeal emphasised in this case, that care
must be taken when drawing inferences from deleted text, as
deletions can be made for a range of reasons and are not always
indicative of an agreed stance between the parties, the Court was
willing to look at them here, to assist in interpreting the
parties' contract.
The appellant, Mr Atulkumar Parekh, sought a declaration that
his individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) should be set aside. His
central argument was that the IVA was conditional on the acceptance
of a simultaneous IVA relating to his wife, Mrs Parekh (which was
ultimately rejected by Mrs Parekh's creditors). Clause 4.3 of
the proposal submitted for approval by Mr Parekh's creditors
stated: "the acceptance of my IVA is conditional upon the
acceptance of the arrangement for my wife/husband, following
acceptance
