Contract Law

Question 1.

Part A

1. The Sunday Sentinel has for many years run  a weekly crossword competition   Readers are invited to complete a large and very difficult crossword, and send it in to the paper.  The total prize each week is £5,000, and this is split between those readers sending in correct answers.  

a) In one week, one of the crossword clues was printed in error, with the result that  there was no clue for the word that was supposed to appear in the crossword.  It was announced in the Monday edition of the sister paper , the Daily Sentinel, that the competition was cancelled for that week. However, Bel only takes the Sunday Sentinel, and on Tuesday sent in an entry which was in fact wholly correct – she had worked out that the clue was a mistake, and guessed the answer.  This was the only correct answer, but the paper refused to pay.

The issue that arises here is that did Bel accept the offer contained in the crossword puzzle and in addition did she provide any consideration for her promise contained in the offer? The final issue that needs to be considered is whether the offer once made can be withdrawn or revoked. The general rule is that the offer can be revoked up until the time it is accepted. The offer was announced in the Sunday sentinel and then cancelled the following day. Bel did not post her entry until Tuesday which meant that the newspaper had already revoked the offer before she had accepted it.  However since Bel missed the cancellation of the offer in the Monday edition of the newspaper it can be argued that she had accepted the offer before she was made aware of the cancellation. The case Carlil V. Smokeball highlights that acceptance in unilateral contracts needs to be by conduct. To perform the conduct required (to fill out the crossword) is to accept the offer. It can be argued that consideration took place as Mrs. Carllil suffered a detriment by using the smoke ball at the request of the defendants and the sale of the goods provide the benefit for the company. Similarly, Bel would have obtained benefit by winning and the newspaper a financially detriment. In the case of Chappell v Nestle it was considered that worthless chocolate wrappers could count for consideration. This would be equivalent to the crossword.  

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Finally it held in Errington v Errington that a unilateral offer could not be revoked once the offeree had started to perform the act.

However on the other hand in the case of Byrne & Co v. Van Tienhoven & Co Lord Herschell held that for revocation to be effective “it must be brought to the mind of the person to whom the offer is made”. However this may serve to rather difficult when the offer is made to the general public as was the case with the advertisement of the crossword puzzle. In this case it can ...

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The grammar and overall structuring of the essay (see, e.g. paragraph 1 of part (a)) could be improved. Part (c), in particular, appears rushed and is quite muddled. Also the author does not get beyond the very basic case law and would benefit by using more appropriate and recent cases. 3 stars.