How have courts interpreted the expression “null and void” in the context of null and void?

Much was made in the argument of the present case of the fact that the expression “null and void” appears to have been used in some of the judgments referred to. As to this I cannot do better than to quote the language of Lord Halsbury in Quinn v. Leathern [1901] A.C. 495, 70 L.J.P.C. 76, at 81: Now, before discussing the case of Allen v. Flood [1898] A.C. 1, 67 L.J.Q.B. 119, and what was decided therein, there are two observations of a general character which I wish to make; and one is to repeat what I have very often said before—that every judgment must be read as applicable to the particular facts proved or assumed to be proved, since the generality of the expressions which may be found there arc not intended to be expositions of the whole law, but are governed and qualified by the particular facts of the case in which such expressions are to be found. The other is that a case is only an authority for what it actually decides. I entirely deny that it can be quoted for a proposition that may seem to follow logically from it. Such a mode of reasoning assumes that the law is necessarily a logical code, whereas every lawyer must acknowledge that the law is not always logical at all.