In: Economics
Fred Flintstone makes a written offer to sell his car to Barney for $5,000 and delivers his offer to Barney's office. Barney reads the offer, decides not to accept, and throws the paper in trashcan. Barney's coworker, Perry Prehistoric picks the paper out of the trash, reads the offer and signs the paper indicating his acceptance. He drives to Fred's office to present his acceptance. Is there a contract between Fred and Perry? Briefly explain using legal terms.
Answer :- Section 2(b) of Indian Contract Act, 1872 define acceptance as, "A proposal is said to be accepted, when, the person to whom the proposal is made signifies his assent there to." The analysis of this legal definition of "Acceptance" shows that an acceptance is the consent given to the offer (proposal), and a binding contract between offeror and the offeree comes into existence on the acceptance of offer by offeree. An acceptance to be valid must be given only by a person to whom offer has been given. In other words, acceptance must move from the offeree and no one else.
Applying the above legal provision in the given question, Neither there is any contract between Fred and Barney nor there is any contract between Fred and Perry.
Analysis :- i). Initially, Fred has made the offer to Barney but he (Barney) did not communicate his acceptance to Fred, Accordingly, There is no contract between Fred and Barney.
ii). Perry, co-worker of Barney, presented the acceptance to Fred, however, no offer was initially made to Perry by the Fred, Accordingly, his (Perry's) acceptance can not be considered valid for the purpose of constituting the contract between the Fred and Perry.
Conclusion :- There is no contract between Fred and Perry in the given question.