The Mystery of Privity: Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada v Robinson (1915)

This article examines a little known decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada v Robinson (1915). The examination is historical and it provides a different insight into the understanding of privity of contract, a doctrine central to contract law. The examination reveals a process of trans-Atlantic legal migration in which English law was applied to resolve an Ontario case. The nature of the resolution is surprising because it appears to conflict with the better known decision of the House of Lords, Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company, Limited v Selfridge and Company, Limited, which a similarly constituted panel delivered in the same week. This article argues that there was a greater malleability in the resolution of cases concerned with privity than was thought to have existed. It is also argued that the power of Canadian railway capitalism is a significant factor in understanding the legal resolution of the case. Finally, it the article considers the use of English and American precedents relevant to the case. The application of English precedents to the case led to a resolution not entirely befitting Canadian conditions.

The Maunder minimum (1645-1715) was indeed a grand minimum: a reassessment of multiple datasets

Aims. Although the time of the Maunder minimum (1645–1715) is widely known as a period of extremely low solar activity, it is still being debated whether solar activity during that period might have been moderate or even higher than the current solar cycle (number 24). We have revisited all existing evidence and datasets, both direct and indirect, to assess the level of solar activity during the Maunder minimum. Methods. We discuss the East Asian naked-eye sunspot observations, the telescopic solar observations, the fraction of sunspot active days, the latitudinal extent of sunspot positions, auroral sightings at high latitudes, cosmogenic radionuclide data as well as solar eclipse observations for that period. We also consider peculiar features of the Sun (very strong hemispheric asymmetry of the sunspot location, unusual differential rotation and the lack of the K-corona) that imply a special mode of solar activity during the Maunder minimum. Results. The level of solar activity during the Maunder minimum is reassessed on the basis of all available datasets. Conclusions. We conclude that solar activity was indeed at an exceptionally low level during the Maunder minimum. Although the exact level is still unclear, it was definitely lower than during the Dalton minimum of around 1800 and significantly below that of the current solar cycle #24. Claims of a moderate-to-high level of solar activity during the Maunder minimum are rejected with a high confidence level.

Railway promotion in Victorian Britain: engineering triumph or waste of capital?

A key issue in UK railway history is whether the railway system was an efficient response to the traffic requirements of the economy. The UK railway system was constructed entirely by private enterprise with minimal state subsidies. This chapter considers whether the railway system was 'over-built' because the government ignored the advice of the Railway Committee of the Board of Trade. The chapter suggests that the system was over-built by about 35 per cent. The causes of this over-building are investigated and are found to be mainly social and political failures arising from distrust between MPs and civil servants and public pressure on local MPs to ensure that their constituencies were well served by railways.