What Constitutes A Valid Contract Under English Law Supporting Your Answer With Case Law And Statutory Provisions

The particular focus of this essay is on how terms are implied. This is central because the courts intervene and impose implied terms when they believe that in addition to the terms the parties have expressly agreed on, other terms must be implied into the contract. Gillies argued that the courts have become more interventionist in protecting the rights of contracting parties thereby encroaching upon the notion of freedom of contract. The doctrine of freedom of contract is a prevailing philosophy which upholds the idea that parties to a contract should be at liberty to agree on their own terms without the interference of the courts or legislature. Implied terms can be viewed as a technique of construction or interpretation of contracts. It has been argued that the courts are interfering too much in their approach to determine and interpret the terms of a contract. The aim of this essay is to explore this argument further and in doing so consider whether freedom of contract is lost due to courts imposing implied terms. The essay will outline how the common law implies terms. The final part of the essay will examine whether Parliament, by means of a statute, or terms implied by custom restrict freedom in a contract. An overall conclusion on the issue will be reached.

The principle of law is that for a valid contract to be formed there must be an agreement reached by both parties.

A contract is an agreement between two or more parties which in Scotland does not need to take a specific form, as a spoken agreement is still equally as enforceable as a written contract in certain circumstances such as in most social and domestic arrangements. A contract creates a legally binding bond between the parties involved. Contracts are made everyday sometimes without even realising it from buying a coffee to buying a house.

The offer and acceptance model is flawed- only an agreement is necessary. In order to fully comprehend this statement, we must first establish what constitutes and offer and what constitutes acceptance. “An offer is a statement by one party of willingness to enter into a contract on stated terms, provided that these terms are, in turn, accepted by the party to whom the offer is addressed”. Acceptance is “…an unqualified expression of ascent to the terms proposed by the offeror”. The “Offer and acceptance model” is based on the court’s adopt the “mirror image” rule of contractual formation. Applying the definitions stated above, we can take this to mean that there must be a clear and unequivocal offer which must be matched by an equally

Under Common Law, for a contract to exist, three elements must be present: an offer, an acceptance and a consideration. The notions of offer and acceptance under Common Law are not fundamentally different from those in French contract law, although their effects may differ. The offer indicates the willingness of a party to enter into a bargain, and the acceptance reflects the agreement of the other party to the offer.

for it to qualify as a proper contract in the eyes of the law: offer

The doctrine of consideration is one of the most established doctrines within the common law of contract. This essay will discuss the impact of Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1989] EWCA Civ 5 on the doctrine of consideration. It will shed light on the rules of consideration, ways to avoid consideration, application of the rules in the specific circumstance of performance of an existing duty in cases. Evidently an alteration to the rules and practices would be displayed. Courts today need to make a distinction between everyday social agreements and legally binding contracts, this is where the doctrine of consideration manifests. This case introduces the practical benefit rule needed for consideration however, this case did not alter set legislation formed from the case Stilk v Myric[1809]. As it was held in the Court of Appeal and not seen or upheld by the House of Lords.

Contractual agreements are supposed to be consensual, and freely entered into by the parties involved. Therefore, ‘before a court enforces a relationship as a contract, the courts must have a reasonably certain basis in fact to justify binding the parties to each other.’ (St. John’s Law Scholarship Repository, no date). Resolution of whether a contract was intended to be legally binding is not determined by what the parties themselves thought or intended. Rather, a more objective stance is taken by the courts. This is known as the objective theory of contract, and essentially enables ‘the courts to look at external evidence (what the parties said and did at the time)’ (Poole, 2006, p. 34), as to objectively indicate the parties’ intentions

other in order to form a contract, the value of the consideration need not be

In today’s English law, freedom of contract is one the foundation of contract law. The existence of freedom of contract requires three main considerations: the freedom to

A Contract requires several elements in order to be considered enforceable. However for the purpose of this essay we would explore one of these elements in order to effectively understand the controversial cases of Williams v Roffey Brothers and Nicholls (contractors) Ltd (1990) and Stilk v Myrick (1804). Before going any further one should briefly understand the doctrine of Consideration. Despite the vast amount of content written, the doctrine of consideration is still to this day unclear due to the inconsistency of the courts and its application of necessary rules. Consideration refers to that which the law deems as valuable in that the promisor receives from the promise that which was promised. In other words, it is the exchange of something of value between the parties in a contract. One should be mindful that in English law, every promise may not be legally enforceable; it requires the court to distinguish between are enforceable and non-enforceable obligations. This brings us to the controversial cases of Stilk v Myrick and Williams v the Roffery brothers. Many argue that that the case of Williams was wrongly decided leading to impairments in the rule initially established in Stilk v Myrick. This essay seek to analyse and critique the cases of Stilk v Myrick and Williams v Roffey Brothers and also highlight whether or not the new rule of Practical benefit lead to serious impairments in later cases.

Introduction: In this assignment I will go over a few legal terms in relation to contract law. I will also talk about a few precedents that help explain the law.

In order for a valid contract to exist, six prerequisites must be met. A contract must have an intention to create legal relations, an agreement, consideration, legal capacity, genuine consent and legality of objects. However legal capacity, genuine consent and legality of objects do not have much relevance in the case between B and C. Evidence must be given in order to prove that the parties involved hand an intention to make a legally enforceable contract. In this case, there is an implied non-commercial agreement. The non-commercial agreement is a domestic agreement where the parties involved are between two family members;

Contractual agreement has always been viewed in terms of offer and acceptance. The universal principle to contract law has always been parties may get into an agreement in whichever way they deem fit and they are subject to certain terms as they choose. As far as legal requirements vital to their formation are binding contracts may be formed. Moreover a binding agreement may be manifested in terms of writing or in verbal form.

Conceptually, reasonable expectations of honest men and sanctity of contract are not in conflict. Indeed, they often point to the same direction – it is the reasonable expectation of an honest man that an agreement should be executed. Although it is observed that the two themes usually work side by side, this essay argues that in regards to the rules of acceptance of unilateral contracts, the English courts place more emphasis on reasonable expectations when making decisions.