Contract Law - Seminar 7 Problems in Offer and Acceptance Adams v Lindsell [1818] 1 B & Ald 681 " D posted a letter on Tuesday offering to sell wool at a certain price to C, indicating C should accept via post " C only received the letter on the Friday evening because D had incorrectly addressed it " C sent his acceptance by post that evening " Bu the Sunday, D thought that he would have received the letter from C and so he sold the wool to someone else the next day " C's acceptance came the following day " Court of Appeals held there was a contract between C and D because D could not say that the acceptance had come too late " Also found that it wasn't necessary for the letter to have been received by D in order for it to be seen as a binding acceptance Henthorn v Fraser [1892] 2 Ch 27 " Offeror tried to revoke his offer by post " H called a land society in Liverpool to negotiate for the purchase of some houses belonging to them " The secretary signed and handed him a note giving him the option of purchase for 14 days at £750 " On next day the secretary posted to H a withdrawal of the offer " Withdrawal didn't reach H until after 5pm " In the meantime, H at 3:50 posted to secretary an unconditional acceptance of the offer which was delivered after the land society's office had closed " Court held that the postal rule didn't apply to revocations of offers or modifications " Found applying postal rule to revocations would mean that the offeree couldn't rely on his posted acceptance in case the offeror has posted a revocation Holwell Securities v Hughes [1974] 1 WLR 155 " An offer was made to C and was said to be exercisable 'by notice in writing to D within 6 months' " One week before deadline a properly addressed letter containing the notice was posted by C but not received by D " Court of Appeal agreed with trial judge that the offer didn't rule out the possibility of C giving notice by post, but the offer required 'notice ... to D' and so D had displaced the postal rule and the acceptance would only be binding when D actually received it Household Fire and Carriage Accident Insurance Co v Grant [1879] 4 Ex D 216 " Claimant had applied for shares in H and a letter was posted to him containing the notice of allotment " C never received the letter. H went into liquidation and the liquidator brought proceedings seeking payment from C for the shares. C denied being a shareholder " G argued that for him to be a shareholder the shares had to have been communicated to him and a letter posted but nor received wasn't communication
" Court found he was a shareholder - he'd made an application for