How to Review a Death and Personal Injury UCTA Non-Exclusion in a Liability Clause

Friday 9 October 2026 is the signature date. Eleri reviews a 14-person UK brand of oak coat hooks. The hooks leave a Lampeter workshop. English law. Courts of England and Wales.

The packet — the papers you will actually sign — is an installation agreement with Hookline Ltd in Birmingham.

The hidden risk is a blank line. Both sides are companies. The ban still applies.

For example, clause 16.1 caps liability at fees paid in the prior twelve months. No figure is printed. Clause 16.2 excludes indirect or consequential loss, including loss of profit.

Clause 16.3 is blank. The markup once held a non-exclusion. The clean PDF does not.

Clause 16.4 excludes death or personal injury howsoever arising, including where caused by breach of contract.

In September a Hookline fitter’s ladder slipped in a Bath stockroom. A shop assistant’s wrist. The retailer email says about £4,200. That email is not a court finding.

Slack on 1 October wants clause 16 deleted. The pressure is to treat a consumer statute as the exit. That is the typical mistake.

In practice a first-instance judge cut the injury words and still tested the rest. He also said a failed cut would have sunk the clause. Do not make that cut yourself.

Disclaimer: Checkory provides AI support, not legal advice. Consult a qualified lawyer for binding decisions.

How do you apply section 2(1) before you sign?

Read the ban before you touch reasonableness. Do copy section 2(1). Do not ask whether the death and injury words are fair.

A person cannot, by a contract term or a notice, exclude or restrict liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence. That is section 2 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. Section 2(2) is reasonableness, and it is only for other loss.

A signature is not acceptance of the risk. Section 2(3) says agreement to the term, or awareness of it, is not of itself voluntary acceptance.

Restrict is wider than exclude. Section 13 also catches an onerous condition, a cut remedy, and a cut evidence rule. Check 16.4 for a short notice or a sole remedy on the injury words.

Personal injury includes disease and any impairment of physical or mental condition. See section 14. The £4,200 email is still not a finding. Do not run reasonableness on these words.

How do you review a missing carve-out without deleting the cap?

A blank 16.3 is a missing non-exclusion. It is not an order to strike clause 16. Avoid deleting 16.1 and 16.2 because the line is empty.

In Goodlife Foods Ltd v Hall Fire Protection Ltd, the first-instance judge followed Trolex. If part of a term fails under section 2(1), the rest can still be upheld as reasonable.

The judge treated the death and personal-injury words as excised, then tested what remained. He also said that if he could not excise them, the whole clause would have been unreasonable. Read Goodlife [2017] EWHC 767 (TCC).

That is the red flag. A court might save the rest. The same judge thought a failed cut would take the clause. Do not bet Friday on which sentence wins.

The Court of Appeal did not reopen that point. See Goodlife [2018] EWCA Civ 1371. Stewart Gill is a different test. Do not import it.

RPC’s note of 25 September 2017 records the same Trolex line. It is not the appeal. See RPC on the Goodlife exclusion. The general blue-pencil test is the severability guide. This log does not rewrite it.

What does breach of contract miss in the negligence definition?

Do not tick breach of contract as the statute. The printed words and section 1(1) are different circles. Check both before you sign.

Limb (a) is care or skill in performing the contract. A strict delivery date is not that limb. Limb (b) is a common-law duty of care, not a stricter duty.

Limb (c) is the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 duty. This log does not decide the stockroom. The text is section 1. Section 1(4): inadvertent or intentional, direct or vicarious, still counts. 16.4 names none of the three.

For example, the deleted markup said caused by breach of contract. That phrase is wider than limb (a) and narrower than (b) and (c). Do not restore it as the statute. The mismatch is the mistake.

Why does this ban still bind a business-to-business contract?

Two companies are the reason section 2 can still apply. They are not an exit. Slack has the statute backwards.

Sections 2 to 7 apply only to business liability. That is liability from things done in the course of a business, or from occupation of premises used for the occupier’s business. Hanging rails is that kind of job.

Section 2(4) takes consumer contracts out of section 2 and points to section 65. A trader cannot exclude the same injury there either.

If the other party is a consumer, stop. Ashurst, 10 January 2025, says the ban is not only for standard terms. See Ashurst on limiting liability. In practice a consumer label is how a blank line survives. Schedule 1 and Scots law are other stops.

Which lines should you keep when the injury line is blank?

Keep 16.1 and 16.2. Quarantine the death and injury words inside 16.4. Add one statutory sentence of your own. Do not let the blank line infect the block.

Clause 16.1 prints no figure. Use the liability cap guide if that number is the fight. It is not this fight.

Fraud is another paper. If Slack calls the blank line a fraud carve-out, open the fraud carve-out guide and stop. Do not make fraud the subject of this log.

Workflow: blank line → statutory sentence → quarantine the injury words → leave the cap → walk if Friday needs the wrist inside 16.4.

The sentence: nothing in 16.1 or 16.2 excludes or restricts death or personal injury resulting from negligence, as section 1(1) defines it.

Put it on its own line. Escalate the fee figure and the fraud label. Verify the injury words. Negotiate only by writing the sentence the statute already imposes.

What to write on the non-exclusion, or when to walk?

Write the sentence, quarantine 16.4, or walk. Pause if Slack is the only reason the wrist email is already outside clause 16.

The success bar is one log line that would pause Friday: blank 16.3, plus death or personal injury and breach of contract in 16.4.

Before you sign, say why delete clause 16 is not that sentence. If 16.4 still has to cover the Bath email, walk. £4,200 does not shrink the ban.

A highlighter on the same uploaded file can mark death or personal injury, breach of contract, and the blank 16.3. A human still fills the log. Flags are not a decision.