Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Ltd [1970] EWCA Civ 2 is a leading English contract law case.
Francis Thornton, "a free lance trumpeter of the highest quality", drove to the entrance of the multi-storey car park on Shoe Lane, before attending a performance at Farringdon Hall with the BBC.
The car park operator argued that the judge should have held the matter regulated by this contract, not tort.
The important thing to notice is that the company seek by this condition to exempt themselves from liability, not only for damage to the car, but also for injury to the customer howsoever caused.
If the condition is incorporated into the contract of parking, it means that Mr. Thornton will be unable to recover any damages for his personal injuries which were caused by the negligence of the company.
We have been referred to the ticket cases of former times from Parker v South Eastern Railway Co (1877) 2 CPD 416 to McCutcheon v David MacBrayne Ltd [1964] 1 WLR 125.
If the customer took it and retained it without objection, his act was regarded as an acceptance of the offer: see Watkins v Rymill (1833) 10 QBD 178, 188 and Thompson v London, Midland and Scottish Railway Co [1930] 1 KB 41, 47.
These cases were based on the theory that the customer, on being handed the ticket, could refuse it and decline to enter into a contract on those terms.
The offer was accepted when Mr Thornton drove up to the entrance and, by the movement of his car, turned the light from red to green, and the ticket was thrust at him.
Assuming, however, that an automatic machine is a booking clerk in disguise – so that the old fashioned ticket cases still apply to it.
We then have to go back to the three questions put by Mellish LJ in Parker v South Eastern Railway Co, 2 CPD 416, 423, subject to this qualification: Mellish LJ used the word "conditions" in the plural, whereas it would be more apt to use the word "condition" in the singular, as indeed the lord justice himself did on the next page.
Telescoping the three questions, they come to this: the customer is bound by the exempting condition if he knows that the ticket is issued subject to it; or, if the company did what was reasonably sufficient to give him notice of it.
But, although reasonable notice of it was not given, Mr. Machin said that this case came within the second question propounded by Mellish LJ, namely that Mr. Thornton "knew or believed that the writing contained conditions."
Mr. Mendelssohn parked his car in the Cumberland Garage at Marble Arch, and was given a ticket which contained an exempting condition.
I would, therefore, dismiss the appeal.Megaw LJ and Sir Gordon Willmer agreed with the onerous point, but reserved their opinions on where the contract was concluded.