Foakes v Beer UKHL 1, All ER Rep 106, 9 App Cas 605; 54 LJQB 130; 51 LT 833; 33 WR 233 - - a leading case from the House of Lords on the legal concept of consideration.
Smith v Land and House Property Corp LR 28 Ch D 7 - English contract law case, concerning misrepresentation and holding that a statement of opinion can represent that one knows certain facts, and can amount to misrepresentation.
Edgington v Fitzmaurice 29 Ch D 459 - contract law case, concerning misrepresentation
Falcke v Scottish Imperial Insurance Co 34 Ch 234 - an English unjust enrichment law case, also concerning English contract law, and setting out some fundamental principles of construction of obligations, as viewed to exist by the late 19th-century English judiciary; Fry concurring with Bowen LJ.
In the Arbitration between Secretary of State for Home Department and Fletcher - upholding a Queens bench decision supporting the authority of the Inspector of Mines to require the use of safety lamps; Bowen LJ dissenting.
He was also involved in international law. In 1902 he acted as one of five arbitrators at The Hague in the Pious Fund of the Californias dispute between the United States and Mexico, the first dispute between states arbitrated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. In 1904 he was the British legal assessor on the commission to investigate the Dogger Bank incident where the Russian navy accidentally attacked a British herring fleet in the North Sea. He was involved in the second Hague Conference. In 1908/1909 he was an arbitrator between France and Germany over a case where France had seized deserters from German diplomatic protection.
Zoological and botanical work
Besides law he was on the council of University College London and interested in Zoology. He wrote two books on bryophytes, British Mosses and, with his daughter Agnes, The Liverworts: British and Foreign.
Suppression of opium
In his preface to the 1884 report to the Houses of Parliament titled The Indo-Chinese opium trade considered in relation to its history, morality, and expediency, and its influence on Christian missions, Fry wrote:
"We English, by the policy we have pursued, are morally responsible for every acre of land in China which is withdrawn from the cultivation of grain and devoted to that of the poppy; so that the fact of the growth of the drug in China ought only to increase our sense of responsibility".
Family
Edward Fry married in 1859 Mariabella Hodgkin, daughter of John Hodgkin, granddaughter of Luke Howard, and sister of the historian, Thomas Hodgkin: and they were the parents of seven daughters, one dying young, and two sons. The children included:
