Essential Cases: Contract Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Dickinson v Dodds (1876) 2 Ch D 463. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Nicola Jackson.
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Dickinson v Dodds (1876) 2 Ch D 463
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2. Agreement
Robert Merkin KC, Séverine Saintier, and Jill Poole
Course-focused and comprehensive, Poole’s Textbook on Contract Law provides an accessible overview of the key areas of the law curriculum. This chapter explains how to determine whether parties have reached an agreement. Traditionally, the existence of agreement is determined objectively on the basis of an offer and corresponding acceptance. However, this approach has been challenged for being artificial and inflexible, and even in the absence of these traditional criteria the courts have occasionally found agreement, particularly where there has been performance. For formation there needs to be an offer (as opposed to an invitation to treat) and that offer must be accepted before it has been rejected or otherwise lapsed. In order to be effective, offer and acceptance must be properly communicated, which normally means ‘received’. The chapter also considers the mirror-image rule, whereby an acceptance must be unconditional and correspond with the exact terms proposed by the offeror. This chapter also examines principles that determine when an agreement can be enforced with sufficient certainty and whether liability will arise in the absence of agreement. An apparent contract will be void if the terms are considered too uncertain or where there is no context for gap filling. But this must be balanced with the need to prevent the parties from using allegations of uncertainty to escape from bad bargains. This chapter therefore considers how the courts deal with the difficult question over agreements to agree.
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2. Agreement
Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. A contract requires that the parties reach an agreement which normally consists of a matching offer and acceptance. This chapter discusses the following: the objective test of agreement; identifying an offer and acceptance; rejection, counter-offers and inquiries; communication of acceptance including the postal rule and the contrasting rule for revocation; mode of acceptance; the death of an offer; and unilateral contracts.
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2. Formation of the contract
This chapter identifies the key elements required for a contract to be formed. It looks in depth at agreement, breaking it down into offer and acceptance. An offer is distinguished from an invitation to treat in principle, and specific examples of communications which are commonly identified as invitations to treat or offers are considered (e.g. advertisements, displays in shops, auctions, and website ‘shops’/advertisements). The chapter looks at termination of offers by various means, including counter offers and revocation. What constitutes an acceptance is addressed, and the special rule relating to the time of effectiveness of posted acceptances (‘the postal rule’) is considered, as is its extension to contexts such as e-mailed acceptances. The ‘battle of the forms’ is also looked at.
