The English Contract Law - Case Study Example

Business Law The English Contract Law is a body of laws that regulates different types of contracts in England and Wales (Collins, 2003). This body recognises a contract as being any agreement that has been enforced in a court of law. According to the English Contract law, the formation of a contract involves an individual making an offer, and another individual accepting it by way of communication or acting on the terms of the offer (Mulcahy, 2008). The agreement is normally enforceable if the terms agreed upon are certain and both parties agree that the terms are binding in court. In principle, the English contract law holds the ideal that the agreement should be binding only if both parties are well informed about the contract and have given their true and informed consent to the terms in the agreement (Elliot and Quinn, 2009). The English contract law treats press advertisements as unilateral contracts (Mulcahy, 2008). A unilateral contract is one in which only one party makes a promise or an offer. In this case, an individual makes an offer to many people via an advertisement (Stone, 2002). The acceptance of the offer only occurs when another party performs the set condition to completion. If the condition requires only one party to perform it, then both the offerer and the offeree are protected by the law. The person offering the contract is protected since he is only obligated by the contract to only one of the many oferrees who saw the contract. The second party is protected since he or she is entitled to receive payment as the contract obliges the offerer. Peter vs. Fred Case Scenario In this scenario, Fred had stated in the print advert that he would sell the entire set of Weekly Law Reports from 1970 to 1990 to the first person who was willing to pay £100 for it. Sally called him as soon as she saw the advert and bought the whole set. However, Peter’s problem is the fact that the advert stated clearly that sale would start on Saturday, 11th December at 9 am. He wants to sue Fred for breaching the agreement he had made in the Hygate Times of 3rd December 2011. Peter’s Case Peter has a valid case since he is accusing Fred of not keeping his word, which was clearly stated in a publication. I would advice Peter to sue Fred on the basis of breach of Contract. Breach of contract can be defined as the failure of one party to perform as the contract stipulates. The conditions of the contract/ advertisement can be performed by anyone who fully satisfies all its requirements. Fred has actually breached his contract since he promised to sell the Weekly Law Reports to anyone who fulfilled the following condition: Be the first person to be willing to pay £100 for the entire set of the Law Reports. The advertisement also explicitly stated that the sale of the reports was to start on Saturday the 11th of December at 9 in the morning. The advertisement also specified the venue where the sale was supposed to take place. Nowhere in the contract did Fred mention that people could call him before the 11th of December to make arrangements for buying the Law Reports. However, when Peter confronted him about the sale of the reports to another party, Fred said that he had sold them to Sally because she offered to buy them first. He says that she made the offer as soon as she saw the advertisement and he sold the reports to her then. Going by the conditions that he set in the advertisement, Fred cannot say for sure that Sally was the first person who was willing to pay £100 for the whole set of the Weekly Law Reports. There might have been several other people, including Peter, who might have seen the advertisement before Sally did, and decided to pay the required amount before Sally made her decision and offer. The difference between Sally’s and Peter’s situation is that Sally decided to call while Peter decided to go to the venue of the sale. It is clear that Peter was simply following the conditions set in the contract. He saw the advertisement and he decided that he would pay the required £100 for the Law Reports. He did not call Fred because the advertisement did not require him to do so. Instead he waited until the stipulated date when the sale would take place and he went to make his purchase. He ensured that he was at the venue of the sale well before time to ensure that he had a good chance of purchasing the items in question. Peter did not receive any notification of the supposed sale of the reports to Sally. In the case of J & H Ritchie Ltd v Lloyd Ltd (2007), one can sue a party for failure to offer information regarding changes in a contract. Peter set out early in a taxi on the 11th December so as to be the first in the queue. After offering the £100 to Fred, he did get the reports as he expected. Instead, he was told that they had been sold to Sally, who made her offer through the telephone. Sally did not follow the conditions as they were set in the advertisement, but Fred did. He used his resources to make sure that he was at the sale venue on time, only for Fred to backtrack on what he had promised in the advertisement. In this kind of scenario, I would advice Fred to go ahead and sue for breach of contract. In his lawsuit, he should demand for Fred to sell the whole set of the reports to him as part of general damages, since he was the first person to make the £100 at 9 am on 13 December. Hadley v Baxendale (1854) sets forth the legalities of general damages by specifying that general damages are those that emanate directly from a breach of contract (Poole, 2006). J & H Ritchie Ltd v Lloyd Ltd (2007) deals with the concern of the measure of damages due to a breach of contract. The lack of information regarding the sale of the reports to Sally should feature in considering measurement of damages. Peter can also sue for a disappointing breach of contract. In Jarvis v Swans Tours Ltd (1972), the court rules that the plaintiff could get damage compensation from the individual who had breached the contract. However, I would have given Peter a different answer if Fred had advertised in the Hygate Times of 10th December that “The offer to sell the Weekly Law Reports is now withdrawn”. If Peter had not seen the advertisement, then the case against Fred would have been as strong as it was in the previous scenario. Therefore, there would not be any need to sue him. This is because in this case, Fred has already taken a formal step to stop the sale of the Reports through a withdrawal of the offer that he had made before (Taylor and Taylor, 2007). Using the same publication in which the offer had appeared to withdraw his offer means that Fred is willing to let as many people as possible see the withdrawn offer. This is proof that he did not intend to breach any contract. Creating an advertisement to announce the cancellation or withdrawal of the contract automatically renders the contract null and void (Elliot and Quinn, 2009). Therefore, Peter would not have a case against Fred. References Collins, H. 2003. The law of Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Elliot, C. and Quinn, F. 2009. Contract Law. Harlow: Longman Mulcahy, L. 2008. Contract Law In Perspective. London: Taylor and Francis Poole, J. 2006. Casebook on Contract Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press Stone, R. 2002. The Modern Law of Contract. London: Routledge Taylor, R and Taylor, D. 2007. Contract Law Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press Young, M. 2010. Contract Law: The Basics. London: Taylor and Francis. (Young, 2010) Read More