George Mitchell (Chesterhall) Ltd v Finney Lock Seeds Ltd is a case concerning the sale of goods and exclusion clauses.

Ultimately, all agreed that the clause was invalid under the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973 (see now s 55 SGA 1979 and UCTA 1977) because it was unreasonable.

It is illustrated by two cases, Thompson v London, Midland and Scottish Railway Co.[4] (in which there was exemption from liability, not on the ticket, but only in small print at the back of the timetable, and the company were held not liable) and L'Estrange v F Graucob[5] (in which there was complete exemption in small print at the bottom of the order form, and the company were held not liable).

Faced with this abuse of power – by the strong against the weak – by the use of the small print of the conditions – the judges did what they could to put a curb upon it.

They used it so as to depart from the natural meaning of the words of the exemption clause and to put upon them a strained and unnatural construction.

If a shipowner delivered goods to a person without production of the bill of lading, he could not escape responsibility by reference to an exemption clause.

This is illustrated by these cases in the House of Lords: Glynn v Margetson & Co.;[6] London and North Western Railway Co. v Neilson;[7] Cunard Steamship Co. Ltd. v Buerger;[8] and by Canada Steamship Lines Ltd v The King[9] and Sze Hai Tong Bank Ltd. v Rambler Cycle Co. Ltd.[10] in the Privy Council; and innumerable cases in the Court of Appeal, culminating in Levison v Patent Steam Carpet Cleaning Co. Ltd.[11] But when the clause was itself reasonable and gave rise to a reasonable result, the judges upheld it; at any rate, when the clause did not exclude liability entirely but only limited it to a reasonable amount.

These are illustrated by Gibaud v Great Eastern Railway Co.,[12] Alderslade v Hendon Laundry Ltd.,[13] and Gillespie Bros & Co Ltd v Roy Bowles Transport Ltd.[14]The House of Lords unanimously upheld the judgment of Lord Denning that the limitation of liability to the cost of the seeds was not effective, because given the relative positions and capability of insurance, it failed the reasonableness test.

's judgment in the instant case, which was delivered on September 29, 1982, is probably the last in which your Lordships will have the opportunity of enjoying his eminently readable style of exposition and his stimulating and percipient approach to the continuing development of the common law to which he has himself in his judicial lifetime made so outstanding a contribution.Lord Bridge gave the leading judgment.

At page 810 he said, the passing of ... the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, had removed from judges the temptation to resort to the device of ascribing to words appearing in exemption clauses a tortured meaning so as to avoid giving effect to an exclusion or limitation of liability when the judge thought that in the circumstances to do so would be unfair.On the question of the term's fairness, Lord Bridge held, the court must entertain a whole range of considerations, put them in the scales on one side or the other, and decide at the end of the day on which side the balance comes down.

By contrast, Lord Denning thought that the ability of the courts to control unfair terms, now granted through legislation, had made it possible to apply sensible principles when construing contracts.

There was no need to twist the meaning of words to reach a fair result, if unfair contract terms could be scrapped on the ground that one party had unequal bargaining power.

However, the contra proferentem rule (as used in Houghton v Trafalgar Insurance Co. Ltd[17][18] to give a "fair result" through an unreasonable interpretation of an exemption clause) still forms part of the European Community's consumer protection law as imposed in the Unfair Consumer Contract Terms Directive.