1. Introduction: Privity of Contract and Third Party Rights

Contracts are frequently designed to benefit people who aren't actually parties to them — a guarantor's family, a parent company, a tenant under a building contract. The old rule was blunt: only a party could sue. Modern law is more flexible, and as a solicitor you need to know exactly when an outsider can enforce a term, how to draft so they can (or can't), and what happens to the original promisee's own rights. This is the machinery behind countless commercial and consumer arrangements.

Here's how the lesson is laid out:

1. The Doctrine of Privity — the core rule, why it cuts both ways, and the routes around it.
2. The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 — how a non-party can enforce a term, and how parties can exclude that.
3. Identifying the Third Party and Varying Rights — naming beneficiaries and when their rights become fixed.
4. Defences, Remedies and the Promisee's Position — what the promisor can argue, what the third party can claim, and the no-double-recovery rule.
5. Promisee Recovering for a Third Party's Loss — when the original party can claim damages for harm suffered by someone else.
6. Common Law, Equitable Routes and Assignment — collateral contracts, trusts, agency and how rights are transferred.