Court Of Appeal Holds Spa Earn-Out Unenforceable As An Agreement To Agree

The Court of Appeal has rejected a seller's claim that he was entitled under a sale and purchase agreement ("SPA") to provide consultancy services to the target company for a further period after an initial four year earn-out. Applying settled principles, the court held that an agreement to provide consultancy services for "such further period as shall reasonably be agreed" was not enforceable because it was an agreement to agree: Morris v Swanton Care & Community Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 2763.

Though each case will turn on the words used in the specific contract, the decision illustrates that where parties seek to account for future uncertainty by stipulating that the parties will ultimately have to reach further agreement, the courts will be slow to find that either party has an enforceable right in relation to the terms or even the existence of that further agreement. The same is true of a clause requiring parties "reasonably" to agree, or to use best or reasonable endeavours to agree. Such formulations cannot turn an unenforceable provision into an enforceable agreement.

As this case shows, there is a fundamental difference between parties postponing agreement (which, commercially, may be justified given uncertainties surrounding what may happen in the future) and parties actually reaching agreement in relation to future terms of their relationship, albeit with gaps to be resolved between them based on objective criteria capable of assessment by the court. The former does not give rise to any enforceable obligations; the latter may be enforceable, provided that the gaps do not give rise to such uncertainty as to call into question whether there has been a meeting of minds at all.

In the particular context of earn-out provisions in SPAs, parties should be careful to ensure that the relevant provisions preserve sufficient flexibility for the parties to react to future developments but without creating such uncertainty as to render the clause unenforceable. Since each SPA turns on its own terms, it is impossible to adopt a one size fits all approach; however, it is at least clear that if the SPA provision leaves open the possibility of parties agreeing or disagreeing (whether reasonably or not), the courts will be slow to give such a provision binding contractual effect. The Court of Appeal's judgment also makes clear that if parties wish to create an enforceable agreement by reference to an objective framework which can fill in any gaps later...