(NOT SO) LUDICROUS LITIGATION | CARLILL V CARBOLIC SMOKE BALL

Welcome to (not so) Ludicrous Litigation, in which we cover infamous legal cases and explain the rationale behind them! This month, we bring you Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball, a case involving a defendant who manufactured medicinal smoke balls and Mrs Carlill, the claimant.

Carbolic Smoke Ball claimed that their product could prevent the flu. They published an advertisement stating that if anyone were to use their smoke balls for a specific period of time and caught the flu, they would pay the person £100. When Mrs Carlill bought and used a smokeball, she nevertheless ended up contracting a flu. She therefore tried to claim the £100, but failed. The company’s rationale was that the advertisement could not give rise to a contract, since it was impossible to make a contract with every single person who saw an ad (“the world at large”) and thus, they were not legally bound to pay the money to Mrs Carlill.

However, Carbolic Smoke Ball’s argument was rejected by the court. This is because they had indeed made an offer -- an expression of willingness to enter into a contract on specific terms -- and had displayed intent to create legal relations by depositing £1000 into the bank for the purpose of fulfilling the pledge in their ad. As a result, the company’s advertisement is still regarded as a unilateral offer to the world at large, which became a contract when the terms were performed by Mrs Carlill. (Unilateral offers are different from bilateral offers between two people in that the former can be performed by the offeree without further negotiation.) She was therefore entitled to the £100 from Carbolic Smoke Ball.