Legal Advice for Contractual Mistakes

STUDENT ID& NAME

Issue
The objective is to ascertain legal advice to Dan for the given scenarios as highlighted below.
Have Dan and Mary entered into contract for the sale of Honda Jazz irrespective of their
mutual mistake regarding colour of Honda Jazz?
Have Dan and Michael entered into a contract irrespective of the fact that Michael has
terminated the offer?
Have Dan and Gordon entered into a contract irrespective of Dan’s unilateral mistake
regarding signing of the contract?
Have Dan and Edgar entered into a contract for Holden Statesman despite that Dan’s worker
wrongly misprinted the price sticker on the car?
Law
Mistakes do happen when people are entering into contractual relations. One type of mistake
is mutual mistake which refers to a scenario where mistake has happened on part of both
buyer and seller. Typically, this arises in the context of the object for sale which on account
of insufficient description may lead to mistake. Contracts enacted based on mutual mistake
and that too regarding fundamental aspects such as object of sale would lead to contract being
declared void in line with the judgement in Raffles v Wichelhaus(1864) 2 Hurl & C 906 case
(Taylor and Taylor, 2015, p. 132).
The postal rule highlights the offer and acceptance related rules that are applicable when the
selected mode of communication is through post. The offer becomes valid only after the letter
indicating the same has been received by the offeree. Any delay in the receipt of offer letter
would lead to delay in offer being communicated. However, acceptance on part of offeree
becomes valid immediately when the letter indicating consent for the offer is posted
irrespective of the time taken to reach the offeror. This has been exhibited in the judgement
given in Adams v Lindsell (1818) 106 ER 250 case ( Lindgren, 2014, p. 105).
In certain situations only one contracting party is mistaken leading to a unilateral mistake. In
such scenario, it is expected that the other party should rectify the mistaken party provided
the other party knows about the mistake. This is as per the judgement given in Cundy v.
Lindsay (1878) 3 App. Cas. 459 case (Andrews, 2014, p. 145). A particular situation
requiring special rules is when a written document is signed by mistake by one of the parties.
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