Contract Case Study

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LAW CASE STUDY  -Adnan Iqbal

For a legally binding contract we need an offer and acceptance. An offer is an expression of willingness to be bound by the terms of offer once it is accepted. The offer may be made in writing, by words, by conduct or by a mixture of all three. It can be made to one person, a group of people or to the world at large as in Carlill-v-Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. the facts were that the defendants advertised that they would pay £100 to anyone who contracted influenza after having purchased and used one as directed and claimed the reward. The defendants urged, inter alia, that it was impossible to contract with the whole world. The curt held that the advertisement constituted an offer to the world at large, accepted by the plaintiff, who was entitled to the £100.

An acceptance is a ‘mirror image’ of the offer, with no variation of the terms of the offer. An acceptance must be communicated (Felthouse-v-Bindley) and can be in any form e.g. writing, words or conduct or a mixture of all three.

On 20th June Edward offered by telephone to sell his car to Fred for £5,000 and said he would send a messenger for Fred’s reply on 27th. Here we can see that an offer has been made with clear terms. However we need to look at the mode of an acceptance, Edward had said that he would send a messenger, but is the messenger mandatory. If we look at Eliason-v-Henshaw, it was held that if the offeror prescribes a particular method of communicating acceptance and makes it clear that no other method will suffice, and then there may be no contract if the offeree uses a different method. But in Tinn-v-Hoffman it was said if the offeree was requested to reply by return of post, then any method that would arrive no later than return of post would do, more recently the Court of Appeal adopted the same approach as in Yates-v-Pulleyn. This means that as Edward has not clearly stated that no other method other than the messenger will suffice then it is not mandatory to use messenger.

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It is important to distinguish between a counter-offer and a request for further information, as it is important because of the effect on the original offer. As we can see from paragraph two, on the 22nd Fred faxed Edward saying ‘would like to have car, can you offer guarantee?’ The status of this guarantee is that it could be a counter offer as in Hyde-v-Wrench or simply a request for more information as in Stevenson-v-McLean.

A counter offer for example may simply be that the offeree is not happy with one or more of the terms and makes changes accordingly. ...

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