Teaching Contract: My Way (Volume 2) Book + eBook

By Professor David McLauchlan

Teaching Contract: My Way, Volume Two, completes Professor David McLauchlan’s explanation and illustration of his approach to teaching the law of contract that began in Volume One. It does so by reproducing the text of a selection of classes he conducted over a period of more than 50 years. The aim of these classes was to assist the development of the analytical and lawyering skills that would equip students for their future careers in the law while at the same time ensuring that they acquired a firm grounding in the core principles of the subject.

The chapters in this volume consist of both lectures and Socratic discussions on some of main topics that will usually occupy the second half of a full-year Contract course: misrepresentation and breach, contract interpretation and rectification, contractual mistake, incapacity and unconscionability, and aspects of the law of damages for breach of contract.

This is a book for all readers of law - from students early in their legal development to members of the profession who are seeking a refreshed reference to the law of contract that is more engaging and enlightening than reading a textbook.

From the Foreword to Volume One by Sir Stephen Kós:

“What is magnificent about this idea is that it combines for posterity both David’s talents: here is not just profound scholarship, but also his method of teaching. This work’s influence on a generation of teachers of law should be profound. Unlike journal articles or textbook chapters, these chapters draw you in inexorably, so you become part of the conversation between professor and student. As would be expected, they are warm, wise, disciplined and depth-finding ... Here is neither sterility nor superficiality. Rather, the lectures presented are didactic, demanding and, ultimately, deeply satisfying. A David McLauchlan lecture was always an event. The fifty or so that this two-volume work will deliver, and which you are about to embark upon, are a triumph.”

About the Author

Preface to Volume Two

Foreword to Volume One

1.       Misrepresentation and Breach of Contract: An Introduction

2.       Reform of the Law of Misrepresentation in New Zealand

3.       Statements of Opinion

4.       Mere Representation or Term of the Contract? Part One

5.       Mere Representation or Term of the Contract? Part Two

6.       Repudiation: Woodar Investment v Wimpey Construction

7.       What is a Breach of Contract?

8.       Interpretation of Contracts: An Introduction

9.       Rectification for Common Mistake

10.     Contractual Mistakes: An Introduction

11.     Conlon v Ozolins

12.     The Aftermath of Conlon v Ozolins

13.     The Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017: An Evaluation

14.     Mental Incapacity and Unconscionability

15.     Nichols v Jessup: An Unconscionable Bargain?

16.     Bridgewater v Leahy: Another Unconscionable Bargain?

17.     Damages for Breach of Contract: An Introduction

18.     Revisiting The Golden Victory

19.     Remoteness of Damage

20.     Diminution in Value or Cost of Cure?

21.     Reliance Damages for Breach of Contract

22.     Calculating Loss of Bargain Damages

23.     The Great Case of Commonwealth of Australia v Amann Aviation

24.     The Minimum Performance Rule

25.     Avoided Loss, Compensating Advantages and Collateral Benefits: Part One

26.     Avoided Loss, Compensating Advantages and Collateral Benefits: Part Two

Appendix: David McLauchlan’s Publications 1972–2025

Table of Cases

Index