Contract Law Final Exams Notes
PART 2: AGREEMENT
A. Offer and acceptance
Offer
* Objective approach: offer must normally be interpreted in the sense in which it would reasonably be understood by an ordinary person, even though the offeror’s actual meaning was otherwise. * Definition: indication by one person to another of his or her willingness to enter into a contract with that person on certain terms. The ‘offer’ must indicate a willingness by the offeror to be bound without further negotiation as to the terms of the proposed contract. * Offer creates in the offeree a power to create a contract by their unilateral action. * Whether a statement is an offer depends on whether the person to whom it is addressed would reasonably interpret it as such.
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists Ltd * Display of goods in a store is an invitation to treat rather than offer.
Somervell LJ * The contract is not completed until, the customer having indicated the articles which he needs, the shopkeeper, or someone on his behalf, accepts that offer. * No reason for implying from this self-service arrangement any implication other than that it is a convenient method of enabling customers to see what there is and choose, and possibly put back and substitute, articles which they wish to have, and then to go up to the cashier and offer to buy what they have so far chosen.
Birkett LJ * It would be wrong to say that the shopkeeper is making an offer to sell every article in the shop to any person who might come in and that that person can insist on buying any article by saying ‘I accept your offer’. * The mere fact that a customer picks up a bottle of medicine from the shelves in this case does not amount to an acceptance of and offer to sell. * It is an offer by the customer to buy and there is no sale effected until the buyer’s offer to buy is accepted by the acceptance of the price.
Australian Woollen Mills Pty Ltd v Cth
Facts
* 1946
A. Offer and acceptance
Offer
* Objective approach: offer must normally be interpreted in the sense in which it would reasonably be understood by an ordinary person, even though the offeror’s actual meaning was otherwise. * Definition: indication by one person to another of his or her willingness to enter into a contract with that person on certain terms. The ‘offer’ must indicate a willingness by the offeror to be bound without further negotiation as to the terms of the proposed contract. * Offer creates in the offeree a power to create a contract by their unilateral action. * Whether a statement is an offer depends on whether the person to whom it is addressed would reasonably interpret it as such.
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists Ltd * Display of goods in a store is an invitation to treat rather than offer.
Somervell LJ * The contract is not completed until, the customer having indicated the articles which he needs, the shopkeeper, or someone on his behalf, accepts that offer. * No reason for implying from this self-service arrangement any implication other than that it is a convenient method of enabling customers to see what there is and choose, and possibly put back and substitute, articles which they wish to have, and then to go up to the cashier and offer to buy what they have so far chosen.
Birkett LJ * It would be wrong to say that the shopkeeper is making an offer to sell every article in the shop to any person who might come in and that that person can insist on buying any article by saying ‘I accept your offer’. * The mere fact that a customer picks up a bottle of medicine from the shelves in this case does not amount to an acceptance of and offer to sell. * It is an offer by the customer to buy and there is no sale effected until the buyer’s offer to buy is accepted by the acceptance of the price.
Australian Woollen Mills Pty Ltd v Cth
Facts
* 1946