Associated Newspapers Ltd v Bancks [1951] HCA 24

High Court of Australia Dixon, Williams, Webb, Fullagar and Kitto JJ. Associated Newspapers Ltd v Bancks [1951] HCA 24

ORDER Appeal dismissed with costs.

Cur. adv. vult.

The Court delivered the following written judgment:—

May 11 Dixon, Williams, Webb, Fullagar and Kitto JJ.

This is an appeal by the plaintiff company from a decretal order made by the Supreme Court of New South Wales in its equitable jurisdiction (Roper C.J. in Eq.) dismissing its suit with costs. The purpose of the suit is to obtain injunctions enforcing negative covenants in a contract made between the plaintiff and the defendant on 22nd September 1948. The defendant purported to rescind this contract on 26th February 1951, and the question on the threshold of the appeal is whether this rescission was effective, because it is only if it was ineffective that the question of the appropriate relief need be considered. His Honour held that the rescission was effective.

The facts of the case are in a small compass. The contract in suit is a contract by which the defendant agreed for the term of ten years commencing on 27th March 1949 for a substantial weekly salary to devote the whole of his time and attention to the plaintiff's affairs and business and use his best endeavours to promote and foster the same to the best of his skill and ability. By cl. 5 the defendant agreed in the course of his employment to prepare and furnish to the plaintiff weekly a full-page drawing of "Us Fellers" or such other subject as might be agreed upon from time to time and the plaintiff undertook that each weekly full-page drawing would be presented on the front page of the comic section of the "Sunday Sun and Guardian" (a weekly newspaper published each Sunday by the plaintiff). The contract contains a number of clauses relating to the copyright in "Ginger Meggs", the principal character in "Us Fellers", which remained in the defendant, to the publication of a Sunbeams annual, and to a licence for the company to use the copyright in the event of the death of the defendant &c., which it is unnecessary to set out in any detail. In his letter of 26th February 1951 the defendant stated that as the company had repeatedly, without his consent and in face of his protest, broken its undertaking contained in cl. 5 of the contract, he thereby gave notice that he was no longer bound by the contract.