Comparison between Postal Acceptances and Email Acceptances, Postal Rule and Australian Court of Law - Coursework Example

Running Header: Postal Rule Acceptance Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Application of Postal Acceptance Rule 4 Comparison between Postal acceptances and Email acceptances 5 Challenges of postal rule 6 Postal rule and Australian court of law 7 Conclusion 8 Introduction Postal rule acceptance is considered to reasonable means of conveyance and the acceptance is considered to be valid when the mail is dropped at the post office and it is postmarked. In most of the cases the mailbox rule is normally used to pay the premium of the insurance and it is considered to be a contract which is acceptable. It was established in 1808 as a legal norm which lend to the formation of the current used modern types of communication e.g. email. The other alternative names that are used to identify this kind of communication are the postal rule, the posting rule or the postal acceptance rule. The postal acceptance rule holds true for the acceptances. There are some cases whereby it is made obvious that the response should be received by specific date. For this cases a person cannot wait until the date for the acceptance, it might be rejected, because the receiving date will be different from the commitment date. The personal acceptance rule applies when there are documents which are conflicting which have been sent (Watnick 2004, p.90). For example if a person decides that he will reject an offer and later he changes his mind the question that comes in is which one is valid. The postal acceptance rule will rule that the one which is valid is the one that takes precedence unless the rejection reaches before the mailing of the acceptance. The court has also rules out that a person is not necessarily supposed to receive the acceptance for it to be valid unless the one who sent the acceptance doubts its delivery. The deal is declared on when a person has delivered the acceptance at the sending office unless there is something that has happened at the office which will affect the delivering of the acceptance e.g. if it rained heavily and mailroom was flooded. Application of Postal Acceptance Rule When the rule was established it was not clear how the communication was supposed to be carried out. The postal communication was experiencing delays and it had to change some of it procedures to be effective. The postal acceptance rule was incorporated in the common law systems. Where there is uncertainty concerning the formation of the contract the other methods of communication are used. The case of Lindsell v Adams, the rule was adoted for the avoidance of mischievous and extraordinary consequences which could have resulted because of the cancellation of the contract and the argument was that they had received. The postal rule justification helps in the provision of the solution to the parties when they come to the consensus (Robert 2004, p. 56). It was found out that during the posting of the letter there could a better chance for people to come to agreement than the time of delivery. The other reason why the rule has been found to be valid is because the person who requested for the service is believed to have made a contract when he reached the post and the agreement seems to be there as soon as he leaves the post and the offer is accepted. There is an assumption that is made that there is a power that binds the two parties and as soon as there is acceptance the power is exercised. The offeror has the power to make suggestions on what will constitute the conditions of acceptance but as soon as the contract is made then he has no more powers to change the terms and conditions and the law is followed. The offeree can require much time to make a decision whether he will accept the offer and he may also spend effort and money to reach to a decision. Some researchers suggested that the post office was being treated by the both parties as an agent although the literature did not accept that argument because the telegram company and the post office are not agents through which communications can be made. The post office is well known to be a government agency which is used for public services and operates under some rules and regulations which does not describe to be an agent. The post office is used by the public in the delivery of letter and fax in areas which are far apart. The charges to the services are minimal and reasonable to the public (Gardiner 2004, p.70). The letters which are normally sent are always sealed so the information which is contained inside cannot be said that it has been made known to the post office. The rule can be found to be efficacious in that the offeree convenience is not guaranteed and there is some risk which is involved. There can be delays which are likely to occur between the receiving and sending of the post letters and this creates a risk to the both parties because of the uncertainty considering when the message was supposed to have been received. When there are delays in delivers, the receiver is inconvenienced and may be when he receives the message it might have elapsed and might be of no help at all. For example if A is supposed to receive D acceptance, then D is supposed to receive a notice from A, that there was the arrival and receipt of acceptance and A was supposed to be notified about the receipt by D. It was argued that there was a delay and a time gap between the receiving and sending and the delays the both parties that were involved they were not in position to control the transmission. They argued that if the performance of the postal rule was similar to the email the postal rule was to be incorporated to the email acceptances. Comparison between Postal acceptances and Email acceptances Email is a modern method of communication and it is instant and the general rule of acceptance applies. The people who want to send an email opens a web browser and logs in to the email account (Gardiner 2004, p.70). He can even draft the email without necessarily being connected to the internet. The sender attaches any document he wants to send along with the email and the clicks the send button. When the sender is pressing the send button he must make sure that the internet connection is available and the email address he is sending to is correctly entered. Then the email is transmitted via the internet and finally reaches to the last computer where the receiver can receive it from. When the email is being transmitted it involves moving the large network up to where the email service provider is hosted. It will move all along even if the recipient is in the other room. The whole process will take few minutes before the recipient gets the message (Dickie 2006, p.120). The emails also delays depending on how busy the network is. The bandwidth of the internet service provider also matter and it will be found out that if the network has many applications which are running then there is a possibility of a delay. Unlike the postal acceptance where the contract is said to exist when the letter is put on the mail box, for the email acceptance the recipient is said to bind to the contract if he is in a position to receive the email. The email acceptance seems to be more accepted nowadays than the postal acceptance because it is fast and it is convenience Challenges of postal rule One of the challengers of the postal rule is the International Sale of Goods at the Vienna Convention. It pursues the general rule that the offer will take the effect when the offeree is reached with it (Treitel 2001, p.52). The letters which are normally sent are always sealed so the information which is contained inside cannot be said that it has been made known to the post office. The rule can be found to be efficacious in that the offeree convenience is not guaranteed and there is some risk which is involved. There can be delays which are likely to occur between the receiving and sending of the post letters and this creates a risk to the both parties because of the uncertainty considering when the message was supposed to have been received. When there are delays in delivers, the receiver is inconvenienced and may be when he receives the message it might have elapsed and might be of no help at all. Postal rule and Australian court of law The law of contract considers the postal rule as being arbitrary. There are different versions and the views are differing for the postal acceptance to considered complete and a lot of challenges arise which affect the parties in case there a postal communication breakdown. The law consider acceptance to be complete when either when the letter is put on the letter box; the delivery to the recipient address and when the offeror acknowledges acceptance. The modern methods of communication do not follow this rule e.g. the email, faxes and telephones using the answering machines. There is a criticism to the postal rule that it only favours the offeree. In the case of Household Fire Insurance v Grant is an example of an injustice that can result from the postal rule application. The case has that Grant had accepted to take an insurance policy and the company posted back their acceptance (Christensen 2007, p.65). The letter did not arrive and Grant was not notified of the acceptance because the insurance company assumed that when it put letter on the mail box that it arrived thus assuming that the Grant was away and the contract existed. The Grant was supposed to start paying premium but on its side it thought that the insurance company never wanted to work with them because they never sent the acceptance letter. This describes postal rule to be unfair in that a party can be considered to be in contract even when it is not aware. The contract is supposed to exist when the Grant receives the acceptance letter. The house of the lords said they will consider it as general rule rather than a universal rule. For the avoidance of the injustices that can be caused by the application of the universal rule, the judgement will depend on the parties’ intentions and judgement of the risks. Conclusion The postal acceptance still performs its function despite the fact that it is arbitrary. There has been a lot of challenges that have been involved with it but still remains the most adopted means to deliver documents in hardcopy form. Although it has been involved with a lot of injustices in earlier cases, this can be minimized by including some clauses which will make the offeror to be exempted. There are some cases whereby it is made obvious that the response should be received by specific date. For this cases a person cannot wait until the date for the acceptance, it might be rejected, because the receiving date will be different from the commitment date (Treitel 2001, p.52). The personal acceptance rule applies when there is document which are conflicting which have been sent. For example if a person decides that he will reject an offer and later he changes his mind the question that comes in is which one is valid. The postal acceptance rule will rule that the one which is valid is the one that takes precedence unless the rejection reaches before the mailing of the acceptance. The court has also rules out that a person is not necessarily supposed to receive the acceptance for it to be valid unless the one who sent the acceptance doubts its delivery. Despite the fact that the technology is catching up very fast it, postal acceptances will still be operational even in the near future. References Christensen, S 2007, ‘Formation of Contracts by Email – Is it Just the Same as the Post?’ Technology Law & Justice Journal, Vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 56-92. Dickie, L 2006, ‘When and where are Electronic Contracts Concluded?’ Law journal, Vol.5, no.6, pp.103-125. Gardiner, J 2004, the postal rule in contract law and the electronic marvels, current commercial law vol.8, no.5, pp.65-89 Robert, C 2004, Contract Law in Ireland, Thomson Round Hall, Dublin. Treitel, G 2001, The Law of Contract, Sweet and Maxwell, London. Watnick, V, 2004, ‘The Electronic Formation of Contracts and the Common Law “Mailbox Rule”, Baylor Law Review, Vol.8, no.1, pp 75-98. Read More