Parties: Gibson v Manchester City Council Case citation: [1979] 1 WLR 294 Keywords: Contract - Formation - Consensus ad idum Court heard in: House of Lords Summary/ Legal Reasoning: SUMMARY · claimant intended to purchase his council dwelling under the help to buy scheme at a discounted price due to his residency length at the dwelling . scheme was discontinued when the labour party can into power 1971 . CoA held there was a binding contract on the evidence suggested . HoL held there was no binding agreement due to the wording of the correspondence from the defendant relied upon by the claimant LEGAL REASONING LORD DIPLOCK · Lord Denning dissenting judgement in the CoA o "one ought to look at the correspondence as a whole and at the conduct of the parties and see therefrom whether the parties have come to an agreement on everything that was material." . "there was no reference to this standard form of agreement in the documents said to constitute the contract relied on in the instant case, nor was there any evidence that Mr. Gibson had the knowledge of its terms at or before the time that the alleged contract was concluded" (297) . On the content of the letter received by Mr. Gibson, which was perceived to be offer of a contract, the court found there was no such offer o "May be prepared to sell" o "This letter should not be regarded as firm offer of a mortgage" o "If you would like to make formal application to buy your council house, please complete the enclosed application form and return it to me as soon as possible." o "To make it quite impossible to construe this letter as a contractual offer capable of being converted into a legally
enforceable open contract." (298) . there was no offer for the claimant to accept, and therefore this state of affairs could not take place. All judges in agreement. Distinguished from Storer v Manchester City Council Legal implications of decision: . there can be no objective interpretation when the interpretation will not differ from the plain facts of the case, even if it is not what the claimant believed. . there must be a consensus ad idum, a meeting of minds, for there to be an offer and acceptance . factual content of the correspondence cannot be interpreted to mean other thing if it is explicitly clear what it meant, even if it is not what the claimant perceived.