Hypothetical Case Analysis (Contract Agreement) Study

Hypothetical Analysis (Contract Agreement) - Case Study Example An acceptance, therefore, is the act of the offeree of agreeing and approving the offer as it is. An offer may be responded to in 5 ways: (a) acceptance; (b) explicit rejection; (c) counter-offer, in which the offeree quotes, for example, a lower price; (d) a statement of neutrality (e.g. ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’ll think about it’), and; (e) not answering at all (Schane 142). In the problem, at hand, Wally makes two kinds of response: (a) a statement of neutrality, viz. he will be asking his parents about it, which implied no effect on the offer, and; (b) a counter-offer to Eddie by agreeing to buy the computer at a lower price, i.e., $1000. There was no acceptance at this point but neither was there an explicit rejection. On the other hand, there is a counter-offer which needs an acceptance from Eddie. The legal effect of this letter is that even though a counter-offer is made, the original offer is left hanging, and not explicitly rejected, conditioned on the acquiescence of Wally’s offer. Assuming that there was still a valid offer by Eddie standing on July 19th, there is no binding contract between Eddie and Wally after Wally had accepted the offer through a fax on July 19 because the acceptance only validly took effect at the time it was received by Eddie which was on July 21, a day after the lapse of the period the offer is to take effect. The implication is that the revocation took effect before the acceptance, making the revocation valid. This is because under the rule of acceptance, the mailbox rule, which makes an acceptance effective the moment the offeree sends his/her acceptance, does not apply to instantaneous acceptance like fax (Miller & Jentz 181-182). An acceptance by fax, therefore, takes effect only, like all other instantaneous communication, after actual receipt of the acceptance by the offeror. Similarly, a revocation, on the other hand, takes effect only at