Wizards’ Website is just an Advertisement to Invite Possible Customers - Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task

SBM Legal
PO Box 734 Fremantle. WA. 6959
Cameron@sbmlegal.net.auMr Tom ShawC/O Shawsa Tools49 Hero St Osborne Park WA 601715/03/2021Our Ref: SBM/2021/Tom

Dear Mr Shaw,
On request from your brother, Mr Steve Shaw, I have been asked to determine if a contract has been established between yourself and the company Fabric Wizards (Wizards). In this letter, I will provide a breakdown of the information as we understand it and advice on your situation.
To ensure it is all accurate or if any changes need to be made, please advise us of any corrections as soon as possible. The information we have been provided to date is:
On the 15th of January 2021, when mandatory masks came into effect, you reached out to Wizards via their website and subsequently emailed to get some custom masks printed with a logo to give to customers.

You said you were looking at getting around 1000 masks.

Wizards replied with “Happy to do business” and provided the prices for the masks (100 masks) at $1000 for High Quality and Standard Quality at $800, with a one-off $100 fee for the artwork.

You requested further information from Wizards regarding delivery time.
Wizards supplied the information that they could deliver within 14 days of receiving a 10% deposit and provided bank details that the deposit could be sent to.
You replied to place an order of 1000 High-Quality masks, in British Racing Green fabric, and advised Wizards that the deposit had been paid.
Wizards replied advising they did not have British Racing Green, but had a similar green colour and would have them to you within 14 days.
15 days after (30th January) you emailed Wizards advising that since they did not have British Racing Green you did not wish to proceed with the purchase.
Wizards replied informing you that the masks had been made. They also apologised for the delay but the lockdowns had affected production and they were being shipped the following day.

Summary of advice and law applied.
Wizards’ website is just an advertisement to invite possible customers. The legal term is an “invitation to treat” and carries no binding or legal effect in contract negotiations or forming of a contract (Partridge v Crittenden).
The emails where you requested a quote for the masks from Wizards and their subsequent supply of bank details were merely requests and supplies of information on the 15th of January (Harvey v Facey) these have no legal bindings effects on a contract and serve as a neutral way to negotiate terms for a contract. It did come close to what could be considered an offer in a contractual sense from Wizards with the supply of bank details demonstrating an intention to be bound, however, the wording of “could” would imply that it was presenting an option for you to consider rather than a commitment to a contract.
For a contract to have arisen an agreement must be present, typically this takes the form of an offer from one party and acceptance by a second party (Fitzwood v Unique Goal). You made an offer to Wizards when you placed the order for 1000 masks in British Racing Green fabric and paid the deposit (Pharmaceutical Society (GB) v Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd). This would constitute an offer as the terms of a contract were set out clearly and could be accepted as ordered.
Wizards’ reply to your email to purchase the masks could be interpreted in three ways:

A) Acceptance. Acceptance of the offer made by you (as per paragraph 3) and a contract being formed. This is unlikely to be found by a court as Wizards changed a term of your offer which would be more in line with point B (a Counter Offer).

B) Counteroffer. For Wizards’ reply to be a counteroffer, they must change a condition that you set out in your offer, which they did by saying they would use a similar shade of green (Hyde v Wrench). The act of making a counteroffer cancels out your original offer and replaces it with their own therefore it is likely to be found that no acceptance had occurred.

C) Mere Inquiry. Wizards’ email could constitute a mere inquiry that has a legally neutral effect, this is when they request to alter a minor term in the contract. Wizards, however, stated they “will” have the masks of the proposed substitute colour delivered to you; this was not a request, but a statement (Stevenson, Jaques & Co V McLean). This would rule out a mere inquiry as part of this contract negotiation and even if it had, since it is a neutral effect on contracts would still not amount to an acceptance of your offer and become binding and enforceable by law.

On the 30th of January (15 days later) you emailed Wizards saying you no longer wanted to purchase the masks as they could not supply British Racing Green. Since Wizards counter-offered (paragraph 4); this would be a rejection of the offer from Wizards legally ending the negotiations for a contract to be formed.
Wizards could argue that their actions of having completed the masks (Empirnall Holdings v Machon Paull) and you not replying for 15 days could constitute a global agreement; this is where the standard offer and acceptance of a contract is not clear but there is a clear agreement between two (or more) parties (Clarke v Dunraven). However, since they made the last offer and you rejected this in your email on the 30th of January, the standard offer and acceptance approach to contracts would fail.
Global agreement comes into contracts if “the reasonable person” would look at the situation and determine that an agreement between the parties had been reached. In this situation the time delay between their counteroffer and your rejection, it could be considered that an unreasonable amount of time had passed for acceptance to occur (Dencio v Zivanovic [1991]). Given the costs of production of the masks, it wouldn’t be reasonable for Wizards to proceed without confirmation that the change of colour in their counteroffer was accepted, the courts could find that without that acceptance it was unreasonable to proceed with the production of the masks.

Conclusion
With the facts provided our analysis of the situation would suggest there is no contract between yourself and Wizards and you are not liable for the costs under common law, however:
Please ensure all the information provided is correct.
If there is any further information that may be relevant such as any forms you filled out or further correspondence such as the address was provided for delivery, please provide it to our office to ensure that no details are missed that may affect this analysis.
Once you have confirmed the details are correct and no further information to provide, Mr Steve Shaw will handle the matter from here.

Thank you for your time to meet and resolve this matter. We look forward to helping you resolve this matter as efficiently as possible to a positive outcome.

Kind regards,
Summer ClerkSBM LegalCosts: 9 hours x $150.00 per hour = $1350.00

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