Running head: COMMERCIAL LAW
COMMERCIAL LAW
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Commercial Law
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An agreement is an intentional and legal arrangement between several parties and a contract is an agreement which is enforceable in the court of law. The parties to a contract must have legal intention to legally bind the contract (Mckendrick, 2014).
An agreement to become enforceable, the parties must come to an understanding. The essential requisites of an agreement include offer, acceptance, certainty and a common legal intention to become legally bound by the agreement. The parties to an agreement must have legal capacity to enter into such agreement. Minors, intoxicated people and people of unsound mind are incapable to enter into an agreement subject to certain exceptions (Coelho, 2015).
The parties must enter into the agreement with consent and not forcefully or under coercion, undue influence, misrepresentation or fraudulently. The offer made by one party must be accepted by another party to the agreement. Such acceptance must be in accordance with the terms of the offer and is known as the mirror image rule. In case acceptance is not made in terms of the offer, such acceptance shall be considered as a counter offer and not an acceptance of the offer. A counteroffer implies the dismissal of the original offer (Serban et al., 2013)
Contracts may be bilateral or unilateral. A bilateral contract is a contract wherein the parties makes promises to another having legal intention to be legally bound by the contract. For instance- Allan makes an offer to sell his book to Bernard for three hundred dollars and he can claim the property title as guaranteed by the merchant. When parties enter into contract related to business transactions, such contract must include the prerequisites of a valid contract and the parties must fulfil the requisites in order to make the contract enforceable at law (Andrews, 2015).
In a unilateral contract, one of the parties is legally bound to perform his part of the contractual obligations and the other party is not bound to perform his obligations. For instance- a person may promise to pay $1000 to any person who finds his missing dog. A person accepting such offer need not communicate the acceptance of such offer instead the acceptance of the offer shall be implied from the conduct of the person. The acceptance of the offer is made when the person actually finds the missing dog (Coelho, 2015). When the dog is delivered to the offeror, the offeror is bound to perform his contractual obligation, that is, must make the payment of $1000.
However, an offer is different from an invitation to treat. An invitation to treat is merely an invitation to make offer. For example- the goods displayed in a store self are considered as an invitation to treat. However, the concept of invitation to treat is subject to exceptions when it can be treated as an offer (Hunter, 2015).
Under certain circumstances, parties ...
