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20 June 2013 / Siobhan Jones , Caroline Shea KC
Issue: 7565 / Categories: Features , Property
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Things aren’t always what they seem

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When is an undertaking not an undertaking, ask Caroline Shea & Siobhan Jones

Undertakings make the legal world go round. Giving an undertaking to the court is a very serious matter, involving a party entering into a direct relationship with the court under which any conduct inconsistent with the undertaking is subject to the court’s discipline.

So weighty is the stuff of an undertaking that its breach is automatically characterised as a contempt of court, and so grievously is such conduct regarded that sanctions lie not merely in fines, but, if the contempt is serious enough and/or remains unpurged, in imprisonment.

Thus it is that both lawyers and the court go to great lengths to explain to the party offering the undertaking the nature of the obligation, and the consequences of breach. And thus it was that when Mr Salih, a business tenant of a fish and chip shop in Kent, gave his undertaking to the Dartford County Court in June 2007, the seriousness of the promise

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