Contract Law

Contract Law

Viv Windsor bought a local shop and a computer,

Anxious to please the locals, put an advert in the local news paper on

a Saturday, stating that she would sell luxury chocolate shortbread

for £2.50 instead of the recommended retail price of £5.

She also stated that anyone wanting the shortbread should email her or

come to the shop.

Eric pollard, the appellant saw the email at 4.30pm on Saturday and

sent her email on the same day.

She realised that evening that she was making lose so she decided to

revoke the advert.

She contacted the newspaper who published her revocation 9.am the next

morning.

The paper got delivered to Eric at 10.30am

Viv checked her email at 10.35am,

She replied stating that the discount was no longer available.

Eric sued her for breach of contract.

A GROUND OF APPEAL

There was no contract between Viv and Eric since the notice in the

paper was not an offer but an invitation to treat.

ARGUEMENT

A contract by definition is an agreement between two parties by which

both parties are bound by the law and which can therefore be enforced

in a court or other equivalent forum. The law of contract has been

known to bring equality and fairness especially to consumers whom are

said to be more disadvantaged than suppliers/ sellers. Statutes have

also been developed for example, sales of goods act (1979) and the

unfair terms in consumer contract regulations (1994) but does this

mean that consumers are the only ones with rights when it comes to

contract? Should sellers be bound to sell their goods forcefully due

to the law of contract? The answer to these questions ...

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...tion is communicated using the same channel

used to communicate the original offer and if this is done it is

irrelevant if particular offerees did not see or know about the

revocation although this is not an English case, the English case of

Routledge V Grant (1828) which set an authority that an offer can be

revoked provided it is communicated to the offeree. This would be

applied if Eric had really believed that there was a contract in the

first place.

Since there was no consensus ad idem, the advert made by Viv falls

under the shopping rules which states that an advertisement on a

newspaper is not an offer but an invitation to treat, there was no

offer nor acceptance of any sort, it would be simply fraudulent for

Eric to try and Force Viv into an un- existing contract and try to

make her liable to prosecution.