There was confusion since a contract stipulated that goods should be carried in the ship Peerless and there were two ships by that name, one of which would arrive later. D asserted that he had intended the ship that arrived earlier and therefore had not paid, and P sued him for breach of contract. CA, without giving its reasons, denied P’s claim and upheld D’s right not to pay.
CW: Traditional explanation is that there was no consensus ad idem to the thing. This is wrong because contract law doesn’t require a subjective meeting of the minds. On an objective understanding of consensus ad idem, it seems that however a reasonable person might try to interpret it, the statement suffered latent ambiguity: “objectivity simply ran out”.
