An acknowledgment of debt contained within a definition clause of a conditional agreement may survive the non-fulfilment of the condition precedent and the termination of that agreement, where the acknowledgment recognises a pre-existing debt rather than creating a new obligation. The failure of a condition precedent causes the payment mechanism to fall away but does not extinguish the underlying acknowledged debt. However, the dissent raises a plausible alternative construction that such an acknowledgment, when embedded within a conditional agreement, may be confined by the terms and conditions of that agreement.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 9 later cases that cite this judgment.