The claimant contractor was engaged to build a sewerage system. No soil tests or trial holes were carried out prior to tender. The contract contained no undertaking in respect of the soil in which the sewer was to be constructed. The contractor's tender was £10,000 lower than the other lowest tenderer, no doubt because of the claimant's 'very superficial view of the nature of the soil...'. The defendants 'allowed themselves to be tempted to accept the tender ... what no one of the highly respectable gentlemen of whom the Corporation was composed would have done if the matter concerned himself only; but Corporations are popular institutions, because they are not afflicted with the qualms of conscience....' Nevertheless, when the soil conditions turned out in fact to be of such character as required extensive shuttering, no claim for a variation succeeded.
