But Where's the Contract? A Tribute to Professor David McLauchlan

This article is a tribute to Professor David McLauchlan on the occasion of his 40th teaching anniversary. The first part is a personal recollection from each of the two authors. The second part is a joint case note.  It poses the question: how could a real estate firm who knew the vendor did not intend to appoint the firm as agent nevertheless have a legal right to withhold commission? In the decision of Nightingale v Barfoot Ltd, Venning J confirmed that the firm had such a right.  This article challenges the accuracy of that conclusion, suggesting that as there was no evidence to support the formation of an agency agreement, the real estate firm did not have the right to deduct commission. It analyses critically a number of the legal arguments raised in the case and those that should have been raised, including those concerning contract formation, the objective principle, promissory estoppel, and the effect of s 62 of the Real Estate Agents Act 1976 and the Contracts Privity Act 1982.  Much responsibility for the outcome of the case must be pinned on counsel for the vendor, who failed to stop and ask himself "But Where’s The Contract"

Spitzer observations of a 24 micron shadow: Bok Globule CB190

We present Spitzer observations of the dark globule CB190 (L771). We observe a roughly circular 24 micron shadow with a 70 arcsec radius. The extinction profile of this shadow matches the profile derived from 2MASS photometry at the outer edges of the globule and reaches a maximum of ~32 visual magnitudes at the center. The corresponding mass of CB190 is ~10 Msun. Our 12CO and 13CO J = 2-1 data over a 10 arcmin X 10 arcmin region centered on the shadow show a temperature ~10 K. The thermal continuum indicates a similar temperature for the dust. The molecular data also show evidence of freezeout onto dust grains. We estimate a distance to CB190 of 400 pc using the spectroscopic parallax of a star associated with the globule. Bonnor-Ebert fits to the density profile, in conjunction with this distance, yield xi_max = 7.2, indicating that CB190 may be unstable. The high temperature (56 K) of the best fit Bonnor-Ebert model is in contradiction with the CO and thermal continuum data, leading to the conclusion that the thermal pressure is not enough to prevent free-fall collapse. We also find that the turbulence in the cloud is inadequate to support it. However, the cloud may be supported by the magnetic field, if this field is at the average level for dark globules. Since the magnetic field will eventually leak out through ambipolar diffusion, it is likely that CB190 is collapsing or in a late pre-collapse stage.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Spitzer Observations of Bok Globule B335: Isolated Star Formation Efficiency and Cloud Structure

We present infrared and millimeter observations of Barnard 335, the prototypical isolated Bok globule with an embedded protostar. Using Spitzer data we measure the source luminosity accurately; we also constrain the density profile of the innermost globule material near the protostar using the observation of an 8.0 um shadow. HHT observations of 12CO 2 --> 1 confirm the detection of a flattened molecular core with diameter ~10000 AU and the same orientation as the circumstellar disk (~100 to 200 AU in diameter). This structure is probably the same as that generating the 8.0 um shadow and is expected from theoretical simulations of collapsing embedded protostars. We estimate the mass of the protostar to be only ~5% of the mass of the parent globule.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures, emulateapj format, accepted for publication in Ap