Part Payment Of Debt & Promissory Estoppel (25).

Can promissory estoppel be applied to part payment of debt? That is the question we aim to answer in this video, keeping Lord Denning's obiter remarks in D & C Builders Ltd. v Rees (1665), who said that it may be possible to do so. The fact that this may turn out to be problematic, considering that it would clash with eminent case law regarding part payment of debt (Foakes v Beer [1884] as an affirmation of Pinnel's case [1602]), is acknowledged. However, some jurists argue that Lord Denning never meant that promissory estoppel had to be applied to part payment of debt, he only stated that it could be applied where it was inequitable for the creditor to enforce their legal right and this he applied in Central London Property Trust Ltd. v High Trees House Ltd. (1947), introducing the notion of an equitable waiver into the area of part payment of debt. How could this case then be reconciled with Foakes v Beer? The answer to this question perhaps lies in the fact that promissory estoppel only suspends the rights of the promisor, it does not extinguish them.

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