Contract Law Assignment - (Solved)

CONTRACT LAW 2 | P a g e
A contract is a document, which legally binds the parties to the agreement that has been drawn.
The contract is formed of a promise, in which one side of the contracting party promises to do a
particular task for the other party, and in return, the other party promises to pay a value of
consideration, which has been promised under the contract. The contract law has various facets
which include vitiating factors, capable of voiding the contract, the aspects of exclusion clause,
which can limit the liability of parties and different other rules (Mau, 2010). In the following
parts, the different cases have been analysed, so that proper advice can be forwarded by John.
In the case of Robert, the key issue revolves around the success of breach of contract case by
Robert against Julie and his ability to purchase the van, once the same is recovered by Julie.
The contract formation is a very crucial task and involves the presence of different elements, in
order for the contract to get the legal validity. Included in this process are an offer, an
acceptance, the consideration, capacity, intent and clarity. The first step in this regard is an offer.
And offer shows that one party has offered certain terms to the other party (Clarke and Clarke,
2016). It is important that a differentiation is made between an offer and an invitation to treat, as
the former shows the presence of intention to create legal relations and the latter shows the
intention to initiate negotiations for the possible offer resulting in contract. An invitation to treat
is deemed as a pre-offer communication (Miller and Cross, 2015).
Once an offer has been made, it s important that the same is given an acceptance to. The
acceptance is required to be given by the party to which the offer had been made. It is important
that the acceptance is given within the duration for which the offer had been made. Another
crucial requirement for the validity of acceptance is that the offer has to be accepted in the exact
manner in which it had been made (McKendrick and Liu, 2015). Where there are changes to the

CONTRACT LAW 3 | P a g e
slightest in the communication of acceptance, from the offer made, the communication would be
considered as a counter offer. As per the case of Hyde v Wrench, when a counter offer is made,
the original offer comes to an end. In this case, the defendant had offered to sell the estate to the
plaintiff at 1200 pounds. However, another offer of 1000 was made by the defendant upon the
plaintiff declining the offer. On this offer, a counter offer was made by the plaintiff at 950
pounds and the acceptance was never attained on this. When the defendant rejected this counter
offer, the plaintiff gave acceptance to the 1000 pounds offer. The court denied the original offer
as being open to acceptance owing to the counter offer.
Where the offer provides a particular manner of acceptance, the offer has to be accepted in that
manner only. The time, for which the offer is open, the acceptance has to be given in that time
frame only. It is also important that the acceptance is properly communicated (Stone and
Devenney, 2017). In Felthouse v Bindley, the plaintiff and his nephew negotiated upon a horse in
an unsuccessful manner. After this, the plaintiff proposed a price and told his nephew that he
would deem the silence of his nephew as acceptance. The defendant was the auctioneer who was
about to sell the horse as it was covered under the livestock of nephew, which he was about to
action. The nephew stated that the horse had already been sold by the auctioneer. The court
denied that a contract had been formed between the plaintiff and his nephew as silence cannot be
deemed as acceptance.
Consideration is another crucial element of a contract, which needs to be present in the contract
for the same to be deemed as valid. The amount of consideration can be anything which the
parties mutually deicide, but care has to be taken that such amount has an economic value (Blum,
2007). Chappel & Co Ltd v Nestle Co Ltd led to the court holding even three wrappers as valid

CONTRACT LAW 4 | P a g e
consideration owing to condition precedent. The consideration has to be present and not past;
also, the same has to be sufficient and not necessarily adequate.
There is also a need for the contracting parties to have the intention of creating legal relations,
where they are aware of the consequences of entering into a contract. The terms of the contract
have to be clear and not ambiguous. And lastly, there is a need for the parties to have the
capacity to enter in the contract, in terms of sane mind and legal age (Marson and Ferris, 2015).
A breach of contract refers to the promise made under the contract not being upheld. When a
breach of contract takes place, the aggrieved party can make a claim of breach of contract against
the breaching party. And when such happens, the aggrieved party can apply for damages in form
of monetary compensation, or the equitable remedies, which can be opted in form of injunction,
rescission, and specific performance (Lambiris and Griffin, 2016).
In the given case study, an offer had been made by Julie, to Robert, where she has offered to sell
her van to Robert at the price of £3,000. As this value has economic consideration, Chappel &
Co Ltd v Nestle Co Ltd would make it a valid consideration. This offer was open only for a set
duration and had to be accepted through telephone or by speaking to her in person. The text
message sent by Robert is to be deemed as a counter offer, as the consideration price offered in
the original offer was changed in this text message. And when such happened, Hyde v Wrench
led to the expiry of the original offer. Also, the application of Felthouse v Bindley would mean
that the statement made by Robert that he would assume acceptance of Julie at this counter offer,
if she failed to reply, would not be result in valid acceptance of offer by Julie. Hence, owing to a
lack of valid acceptance, a contract was not formed between Julie and Robert. And without the