Law. Offer and Acceptance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Law. Offer and Acceptance - Essay Example When the party accepts the offer it is generally assumed that all negotiations have been done and the part unconditionally accepts the offer. Hence, there is no halfway through, either there is a contract or there is no contract at all. In this case, Anthony is the offeror who made the offer and Joyce is the offeree; to whom the offer is made. An offer must give a clear indication that the offeror intends to be bound by those terms as soon as they are accepted by the offeree. An offer may remain open until the specified time has been completed. Anthony told Joyce to respond to the offer within a specified time which was Wednesday mid-day. After that time, the offer would have been terminated. According to the English legal system, other circumstances in which the offer will terminate are rejection of the offer, a counter offer made by the offeree, death of the offeror or offeree and withdrawal of the offer (Schulze, 2007, p. 321). In this case, Anthony has withdrawn from the offer th rough sending a letter which Joyce received after posting the acceptance. Under the law, withdrawal of the offer must be communicated to the offeree. The withdrawal of an offer is known as the revocation of the offer. The case of Payne v Cave (1789) established the principle that an offer could be withdrawn anytime before it is accepted. There are many rules that apply to the withdrawal of offers. One of the main rule is that the withdrawal must be communicated which means that the offerors must notify the offeree that the offer is revoked (Young, 2009, p. 87). This rule was established in the case of Byrne & Co v Leon Van Tienhoven (1880) in which the defendants were a company based in Cardiff. They posted a letter on 1st October to New York making an offer to sell 1,000 boxes of tinplates to the plaintiffs. When the plaintiffs received the letter, they accepted it by telegram. However, in the meantime, the defendants wrote another letter to revoke their offer but the letter was re ceived by the plaintiffs later. The court held that a binding contract existed between the two parties as revocation would only take place on communication but acceptances take place as soon as they are posted. Anthony posted his revocation by post and it was received by Joyce after posting the acceptance. This means that the offer had not been revoked and Anthony was still under the circumstances of the offer and must be fulfilling his promise despite the losses it would cause to him. Thus, the offer has not been revoked because acceptance was already posted. If the acceptance would not have been posted by Joyce, the offer could have been revoked because the specified time given for the offer was still valid. Thus, an offer has been made and accepted as well. An offer is revoked only if the revocation is communicated to the offeree but the acceptance is made as soon as it is posted. The contract law establishes that acceptance of an offer is when the offeree has unconditionally acc epted to all terms of the offer. Acceptance can be oral or in writing, but at times acceptance can be done by an act such as delivering goods in a response to the offer. Acceptance does not take effect until it is communicated by reasonable means. Lord Denning explained this principle in Entores Ltd v Miles Far East Corporation (1955) that if A shouts an offer to B over a river and just as B shouts back in acceptance, a noisy aircraft flies over and prevents A from hearing B’s acceptance, no legally binding contract is made. This means that A must hear the acceptance of B only then will it be called communicated (Schulze, 2007, p. 321). However, there are some exceptions to this communication rule. One of the