The Supreme Court case of Steamship Company v. Joliffe involved a dispute between the plaintiff, the steamship company, and defendant, Mr. Joliffe. The steamship company had issued tickets to passengers for passage from New York to Liverpool on one of their ships but when they arrived in Liverpool it was discovered that some of these passengers were not allowed entry due to having been previously excluded by British law. As such, the steamship company sought compensation from Mr. Joliffe as he had sold them these tickets despite knowing about this exclusionary law beforehand and thus should have warned them against selling those particular tickets or refunded any money received for said tickets upon learning about it afterwards. In its ruling, the court found that while Mr. Joliffe did indeed know about this exclusionary law prior to issuing those particular tickets he was still under no obligation to warn his customers nor refund any money received since there is no legal duty imposed upon him in either situation; therefore making his actions lawful and absolving him from liability in regards to this matter at hand

In the case of Steamship Company v. Joliffe, the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a contract between two parties could be enforced when it had been made without consideration. The majority opinion held that such contracts were not enforceable because they lacked consideration and thus did not constitute valid agreements under the law. However, Justice Field dissented from this ruling on the grounds that there should be an exception for cases in which one party has already performed their part of a contract before learning that no consideration had been given by either side. He argued that if one party has already acted upon their promise then it would be unjust to deny them any remedy or relief simply because no actual exchange of value occurred at the time of formation. Therefore, he concluded that courts should have discretion over enforcing such contracts depending on how much each side has done towards fulfilling its obligations under said agreement prior to discovering its lack of consideration