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Timestamp: 2019-04-20 22:24:49+00:00

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Unilateral offer – A contract in which only one party makes an express promise, or undertakes a performance without first securing a reciprocal agreement from the other party.
A unilateral contract differs from a Bilateral Contract, in which the parties exchange mutual promises. Bilateral contracts are commonly used in business transactions; a sale of goods is a type of bilateral contract.
Defendant: Carbolic Smoke Ball Co.
Defendants advertised their balls curing for cold, that they would pay for any person 100l who contracted to use the ball three times daily for two weeks according to the printed directions and defendant also added a passage that “1000l is deposited with the Alliance Bank, shewing our sincerity in the matter”. Plaintiff relied on it but it didn’t work as what the defendant said. Judgment for plaintiff and defendant appealed.
Whether plaintiff’s performance can be an acceptance?
The court reckons that “1000l is deposited with the Alliance Bank, shewing our sincerity in the matter” embodied that defendant did make a promise.
Precedent shows that the performance of the conditions is the acceptance of the offer.
Although a general proposition is that an acceptance should be notified by the offeree to the offeror, in this case, there is an exception. This offer is a continuing offer and they are open to the observation that the notification of the acceptance need not precede the performance. From the nature of this transaction, defendant does not expect and does not require notice of the acceptance apart from notice of the performance.
Both parties to a bilateral contract make promises. With respect to the promise in issue, the party making the promise is the promisor and the other party is the promisee. The legal detriment incurred by the promisee consists of a different promise by him or her to do something or refrain from doing something that he or she was not previously legally obligated to do or to refrain from doing. This legal detriment constitutes consideration, the cause, motive, or benefit that induces one to enter into a contract. Consideration is an essential component of a contract.
Traditionally, courts have distinguished between unilateral and bilateral contracts by determining whether one or both parties provided consideration and at what point they provided the consideration. Bilateral contracts were said to bind both parties the minute the parties exchange promises, as each promise is deemed sufficient consideration in itself. Unilateral contracts are said to bind only the promisor and do not bind the promisee unless the promisee accepts by performing the obligations specified in the promisor’s offer. Until the promisee performs, he or she has provided no consideration under the law.
Suppose you promise to pay someone $500.00 to paint your house. The promise sounds like an offer to enter a unilateral contract that binds only you until the promisee accepts by painting your house. But what constitutes lawful “performance” under these circumstances? The act of beginning to paint your house or completely finishing the job to your satisfaction?
Mutuality of obligation must exist in an enforceable bilateral contract, and this involves the concept of reciprocity. A cannot enforce B’s promise unless A’s promise entails a legal detriment, and B can enforce A’s promise only if B’s promise involves a legal detriment.
If a minor enters a bilateral contract with an adult that is unenforceable due to the minor’s age, the adult party cannot assert absence of mutuality as a defense if the minor sues to enforce the contract. This principle applies to any situation where the law grants a particular party a privilege to avoid a contract because of his or her status.
Fisher v Bell  is a case concerning the requirements of offer and acceptance in the formation of a contract. The case established that, where goods are displayed in a shop together with a price label, such display is treated as an invitation to treat by the seller, and not an offer. The offer is instead made when the customer presents the item to the cashier together with payment. Acceptance occurs at the point the cashier takes payment.
The Defendant displayed a flick knife in the window of his shop next to a ticket bearing the words “Ejector knife – 4s.” Under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, section 1(1), it was illegal to manufacture, sell, hire, or offer for sale or hire, or lend to any other person, amongst other things, any knife “which has a blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife”. On 14 December 1959, the Claimant, a chief inspector of police force, brought forward information against the Defendant alleging the Defendant has contravened section 1(1) by offering the flick knife for sale.
At first instance, the Prosecutor submitted that the Defendant has displayed the knife and ticket in the window with the object of attracting a buyer, and that this constituted an offer of sale sufficient to create a criminal liability under section 1(1) of the Act. The Defendant submitted that this was not sufficient to constitute an offer. The judges at first instance found that displaying the knife was merely an invitation to treat, not an offer, and thus no liability arose. The Prosecutor appealed the judges’ decision.
The court upheld that, although the display of a knife in a window might at first appear to “lay people” to be an offer inviting people to buy it, and that it would be “nonsense to say that [it] was not offering it for sale”, whether an item is offered for the purpose of the statute in question must be construed in the context of the general law of the country. He stated that the general law of the country clearly established that merely displaying an item constituted an invitation to treat. He also read the statute on an exclusive construction (inclusio unius exclusio alterius est), noting that other legislation prohibiting the sale of weapons referred to “offering or exposing for sale” (emphasis added). The lack of the words exposing for sale in the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 suggested that only a true offer would be prohibited by the Act. The court dismissed the appeal.
Offer and acceptance analysis is a traditional approach in contract law used to determine whether an agreement exists between two parties. As a contract is an agreement, an offer is an indication by one person (the “offeror”) to another (the “offeree”) of the offeror’s willingness to enter into a contract on certain terms without further negotiations. A contract is said to come into existence when acceptance of an offer (agreement to the terms in it) has been communicated to the offeror by the offeree.
Treitel defines an offer as “an expression of willingness to contract on certain terms, made with the intention that it shall become binding as soon as it is accepted by the person to whom it is addressed”, the “offeree”. An offer is a statement of the terms on which the offeror is willing to be bound.
The “expression” referred to in the definition may take different forms, such as a letter, newspaper, fax, email and even conduct, as long as it communicates the basis on which the offeror is prepared to contract.
Whether two parties have an agreement or a valid offer is an issue which is determined by the court using the Objective test (Smith v. Hughes). Therefore the “intention” referred to in the definition is objectively judged by the courts. In the English case of Smith v. Hughes the court emphasised that the important thing is not a party’s real intentions but how a reasonable person would view the situation. This is due mainly to common sense as each party would not wish to breach his side of the contract if it would make him or her culpable to damages, it would especially be contrary to the principle of certainty and clarity in commercial contract and the topic of mistake and how it affects the contract.
The contract in Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co was of a kind known as a unilateral contract, one in which the offeree accepts the offer by performing his or her side of the bargain. It can be contrasted with a bilateral contract, where there is an exchange of promises between two parties. In Australian Woollen Mills Pty Ltd v. The Commonwealth (1954), the High Court of Australia held that, for a unilateral contract to arise, the promise must be made “in return for” the doing of the act. The court distinguished between a unilateral contract and a conditional gift. The case is generally seen to demonstrate the connection between the requirements of offer and acceptance, consideration and intention to create legal relations.
An invitation to treat is not an offer, but an indication of a person’s willingness to negotiate a contract. In Harvey v. Facey, an indication by the owner of property that he or she might be interested in selling at a certain price, for example, has been regarded as an invitation to treat. Similarly in Gibson v Manchester City Council the words “may be prepared to sell” were held to be a notification of price and therefore not a distinct offer, though in another case concerning the same change of policy (Manchester City Council underwent a change of political control and stopped the sale of council houses to their tenants) Storer v. Manchester City Council, the court held that an agreement was completed by the tenant’s signing and returning the agreement to purchase, as the language of the agreement had been sufficiently explicit and the signature on behalf of the council a mere formality to be completed.
The courts have tended to take a consistent approach to the identification of invitations to treat, as compared with offer and acceptance, in common transactions. The display of goods for sale, whether in a shop window or on the shelves of a self-service store, is ordinarily treated as an invitation to treat and not an offer.
The holding of a public auction will also usually be regarded as an invitation to treat. Auctions are, however, a special case generally. The rule is that the bidder is making an offer to buy and the auctioneer accepts this in whatever manner is customary, usually the fall of the hammer. A bidder may withdraw his or her bid at any time before the fall of the hammer, but any bid in any event lapses as an offer on the making of a higher bid, so that if a higher bid is made, then withdrawn before the fall of the hammer, the auctioneer cannot then purport to accept the previous highest bid. If an auction is without reserve then whilst there is no contract of sale between the owner of the goods and the highest bidder (because the placing of goods in the auction is an invitation to treat) there is a collateral contract between the auctioneer and the highest bidder that the auction will be held without reserve (i.e., that the highest bid, however low, will be accepted). The U.S. Uniform Commercial Code provides that in an auction without reserve the goods may not be withdrawn once they have been put up.
Acceptance is a final and unqualified expression of assent to the terms of an offer. It is no defense to an action based on a contract for the defendant to claim that he had not intended to be bound by the agreement, if his conduct demonstrated that he had. The essential requirement is that the parties had each from an objective perspective engaged in conduct manifesting their assent. This manifestation of assent theory of contract formation may be contrasted with older theories in which a contract required the parties to have a true “meeting of the minds” of the parties. Under the meeting of the minds theory of contract, a party could resist a claim of breach by proving that he had not intended to be bound by the agreement, even if it appeared objectively that he had so intended. This is unsatisfactory, as one party has no way to know another’s undisclosed intentions. One party can only act upon what the other party reveals objectively to be his intent. Hence, an actual meeting of the minds is not required. Indeed, it has been argued that the “meeting of the minds” idea is entirely a modern error: 19th century judges spoke of “consensus ad idem” which modern teachers have wrongly translated as “meeting of minds” but actually means “agreement to the [same] thing”.
The requirement of an objective perspective is important in cases where a party claims that an offer was not accepted and seeks to take advantage of the performance of the other party. Here, we can apply the test of whether a reasonable bystander (a “fly on the wall”) would have perceived that the party has impliedly accepted the offer by conduct.
An offeree is not usually bound if another person accepts the offer on his behalf without his authorisation, the exceptions to which are found in the law of agency, where an agent may have apparent or ostensible authority, or the usual authority of an agent in the particular market, even if the principal did not realise what the extent of this authority was, and someone on whose behalf an offer has been purportedly accepted it may also ratify the contract within a reasonable time, binding both parties: see agent (law).
Silence cannot be construed as acceptance: see Felthouse v. Bindley (1862) 142 ER 1037.
The “mirror image rule” states that if you are to accept an offer, you must accept an offer exactly, without modifications; if you change the offer in any way, this is a counter-offer that kills the original offer: Hyde v. Wrench (1840) 3 Beav 334. However, a mere request for information is not a counter-offer: Stevenson v. McLean (1880) 5 Q.B.D. 346. It may be possible to draft an enquiry such that it adds to the terms of the contract while keeping the original offer alive.
An offeror may revoke an offer before it has been accepted, but the revocation must be communicated to the offeree, although not necessarily by the offeror: Dickinson v. Dodds (1876) 2 Ch.D. 463. If the offer was made to the entire world, such as in Carlill’s case, the revocation must take a form that is similar to the offer. However, an offer may not be revoked if it has been encapsulated in an option (see also option contract).
Often when two companies deal with each other in the course of business, they will use standard form contracts. Often these terms conflict (eg. both parties include a liability waiver in their form) and yet offer and acceptance are achieved forming a binding contract. The battle of the forms refers to the resulting legal dispute of these circumstances, wherein both parties recognize that an enforceable contract exists, however they are divided as to whose terms govern that contract.
Under English law, the question was raised in Butler Machine Tool Co Ltd v. Ex-Cell-O Corporation (England) Ltd  WLR 401, as to which of the standard form contracts prevailed in the transaction. Lord Denning MR preferred the view that the documents were to be considered as a whole, and the important factor was finding the decisive document; on the other hand, Lawton and Bridge LJJ preferred traditional offer-acceptance analysis, and considered that the last counter-offer prior to the beginning of performance voided all preceding offers. The absence of any additional counter-offer or refusal by the other party is understood as an implied acceptance. In U.S. law, this principle is referred to as the last shot rule.
In Australian law, there is a requirement that an acceptance is made in reliance or pursuance of an offer: see R v. Clarke (1927) 40 C.L.R. 227.
An offer can be terminated on the grounds of rejection on the part of the offeree, that is if the offeree does not accept the terms of the offer.Also upon making an offer,an offeror may include as a condition to the contract the duration in which the offer will be available.If the offeree fails to accept the offer within this specific period then the offer will be deemed as terminated.
An offer is rendered invalid upon the death of the offeree: see Re Irvine.
If the offeree rejects the offer, the offer has been destroyed and cannot be accepted at a future time. A case illustrative of this is Hyde v. Wrench (1840) 49 E.R. 132, where in response to an offer to sell an estate at a certain price, the plaintiff made an offer to buy at a lower price. This offer was refused and subsequently, the plaintiffs sought to accept the initial offer. It was held that no contract was made as the initial offer did not exist at the time that the plaintiff tried to accept it, the offer having been terminated by the counter offer.
It should be noted that a mere inquiry (about terms of an offer) is not a counter offer and leaves the offer intact. The case Stevenson v. McLean (1880) 28 W.R. 916 is analogous to this situation.
A contract will be formed (assuming the other requirements are met) when the parties give objective manifestation of an intent to form the contract. Of course, the assent must be given to terms of the agreement. Usually this involves the making by one party of an offer to be bound upon certain terms, and the other parties’ acceptance of the offer on the same terms.
I hereby agree to sell to Mr. George Dickinson the whole of the dwelling-houses, garden ground, stabling, and outbuildings thereto belonging, situate at Croft, belonging to me, for the sum of £800. As witness my hand this tenth day of June, 1874.
P.S.-This offer to be left over until Friday, 9 o’clock, a.m. 12th June, 1874.
The Plaintiff alleged that Dodds understood and intended that the Plaintiff should have until Friday 9 A.M. within which to determine whether he would or would not purchase, and that he should absolutely have until that time the refusal of the property at the price of £800, and that the Plaintiff in fact determined to accept the offer on the morning of Thursday, the 11th of June, but did not at once signify his acceptance to Dodds, believing that he had the power to accept it until 9 A.M. on the Friday.
It appeared that on the day before, Thursday, the 11th of June, Dodds had signed a formal contract for the sale of the property to the Defendant Allan for £800, and had received from him a deposit of £40.
An action was brought that the Defendant Dodds might be decreed specifically to perform the contract of the 10th of June, 1874; that he might be restrained from conveying the property to Allan; that Allan might be restrained from taking any such conveyance; that, if any such conveyance had been or should be made, Allan might be declared a trustee of the property for, and might be directed to convey the property to, the Plaintiff; and for damages.
It was held that the words “I hereby agree to sell” were nothing but an offer, and only intended to be an offer. Unless both parties had then agreed there was no concluded agreement then made; it was in effect and substance only an offer to sell. The words “This offer is to be left over until Friday, 9 o’clock a.m. 12th June 1874.” were also held to show it was only an offer.
There was no consideration given for the undertaking or promise, to whatever extent it may be considered binding, to keep the property unsold until 9 o’clock on Friday morning at all. It was judged to be clear settled law, on one of the clearest principles of law, that this promise, being a mere nudum pactum, was not binding, and that at any moment before a complete acceptance by Dickinson of the offer, Dodds was as free as Dickinson himself.
Father bought a house for his son and daughter-in-law. He paid _250 as a down-payment, and put the title of the house in his name. He told his daughter-in-law that if they paid off the remaining mortgage (_500) in weekly instalments, he would transfer the title to them when the house was completely paid for. He died before they paid it all off. The late Father’s widow then sued for the house.
Does the young couple have a contractual right to continue paying instalments, and upon completion of payments, take title of the house? Does their agreement remain binding despite the father’s death?
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