The defendant offered to sell his land to the plaintiff for 1000 pounds. The plaintiff counter-offered 950 pounds, which was rejected. The plaintiff then said that he accepted the original offer.
Held: Lord Langdale MR said: ‘there exists no valid binding contract between the parties for the purchase of the property. The Defendant offered to sell it for 1000 pounds, and if that had been at once unconditionally accepted, there would undoubtedly have been a perfect binding contract; instead of that, the Plaintiff made an offer of his own, to purchase the property for 950 pounds, and he thereby rejected the offer previously made by the Defendant. I think that it was not afterwards competent for him to revive the proposal of the Defendant, by tendering an acceptance of it; and that, therefore, there exists no obligation of any sort between the parties.’
Judges:
Langdale MR
Citations:
[1840] EWHC Ch J90, (1840) 49 ER 132, [1840] EngR 1054, (1840) 3 Beav 334
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Gibson v Manchester City Council HL 8-Mar-1979
The plaintiff sought specific performance of what he said was a contract for the sale of land.
Held: The appeal succeeded. In a case where a contract is alleged to have been made by an exchange of correspondence between the parties, in which . .
Cited – Mulcaire v News Group Newspapers Ltd ChD 21-Dec-2011
The claimant, a private investigator had contracted with the News of the World owned by the defendant but since closed. He had committed criminal offences in providing information for the paper, had been convicted and had served his sentence. He . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land, Contract
Updated: 30 June 2022; Ref: scu.245421