[1] Dr Chris Johnstone was a junior doctor in the Obstetric Department at the University College Hospital.

His alternative claim was that the clause allowing him to be so long on call was contrary to the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 section 2(1).

He concluded saying that Bloomsbury Health Authority could only succeed if it showed the clause was an express assumption, or volenti, but then it would still fall under UCTA 1977 through s 1(1).

Leggatt LJ, dissenting on the common law point of implied terms, would have held, that tort cannot trump contract, as counsel Mr Beloff put it.

But these are matters for negotiation by their association, or in default for amelioration by the legislature ... On the result, if the plaintiff fell sick during the performance of his employment by the defendants because it was too arduous for him, he did not do so by reason of any relevant breach of duty on the defendants' part.Browne-Wilkinson VC said the implied term would circumscribe the scope of the express term, so that both coexist without conflict.

In any sphere of employment other than that of junior hospital doctors, an obligation to work up to 88 hours in any one week would be rightly regarded as oppressive and intolerable.