Sir, I am writing in response to your report of 6th April, "OUP 'author' loses fight for publication". Since I am the 'author' in question and my fight in the High Court is now the subject of an appeal, I feel I must correct one or two minor inaccuracies of fact in your otherwise fair and sympathetic report.
Firstly, OUP's and their senior editor Henry Hardy's commitment to the publication of my revised philosophical work Making Names did not reside merely in certain telephone conversations, as you suggest, but also in a lengthy correspondence over the preceding nine months and in a number of subsequent confirmatory letters and other documents, which included statements such as "I am pleased that we are going to do your book and hope that it's a terrific success... Don't worry about delay in revising the book, it's much more important that you get it right than that we publish it a month or two earlier... Let me try to summarise the changes we require (followed by a long list)" and so on.
Everyone accepted that after seven months' further work I had fulfilled all of OUP's revision requirements. A royalty had been confirmed, a short initial print-run in hardback had been agreed and even a retail price (of £15 to £20) had been envisaged; but the judge held that the Press's "absolute commitment" did not amount to an enforceable contract because of the technicality that a numerical print-run had not formally been contracted.
The implications of this judgment, if it is taken as a precedent, will be far-reaching. Not the least important of these is that very few existing author-publisher contracts are enforceable at law, since, as far as I know, very few such contracts specify (minimum) print-runs. All authors presently labouring away under the illusory protection of a publishing contract may well wish to ponder this point.
In my case, even this technicality is moot, for two of OUP's documents that were in evidence do specify an initial hardback print-run, of 2,000. The judge ruled that I could not rely on these documents because, he concluded, the Delegates (the ruling committee of the Press) had not, as I believe, formally approved the book's publication at a meeting on 23rd July 1985.
This conclusion rested in turn upon the testimony of OUP's chief executive Sir Roger Elliott, who stated that the lists and records of General Books considered at that meeting had never existed or had been destroyed. Alan Ryan, the philosopher/Delegate who supported the book at the meeting, has refused to make a statement and is now in the United States, at Princeton.
Yours sincerely,
Go to the next item in this post-trial series or to the next item in the Malcolm v. Oxford saga.
Go to Malcolm's Statement of Claim, to the Case History, to the Affidavits: Ivon Asquith (1), Asquith (2), Henry Hardy, William Shaw (solicitor) (1), Sir Roger Elliott (1), Margaret Goodall, to the Witness Statements: Elliott, Hardy, Richard Charkin, Nicola Bion, Goodall, to the courtroom testimony of the Oxford Six, 14/3/1990: Elliott, Goodall, Bion, Asquith, Charkin, Hardy, to the testimony of Andrew Malcolm 13/3/1990, to the Chancery Court Judgment, to the Appeal Court Judgment, to Malcolm's Points of Claim (the first item in the damages series), to the Damages assessment, or to the Settlement agreement.
Return to the Malcolm vs. Oxford I (1984-92) Index or to the Malcolm vs. Oxford II (2001-02) Index or to the SITE INDEX.
7 Southover Street, Brighton.