Brogden V Metropolitan Railway Case Study

The legal issue to identify in the case of homer and the two fumigation services, is to confirm legal binding contracts between the parties. In order for a legal binding contract to take place, there must be an offer in place. Furthermore, the offer must be communicated to the offeree and consideration must be taken place before the acceptance. The contract is then bound legally between the two parties, making it a legal binding contract once the offeree accepts the offer from the offeror.
A contract is a written or spoken agreement established by three key elements; offer, acceptance & condition. The person making an offer is called the offeror, and the person to whom the offer is made to is called the offeree . An offer is an expression

Therefore, the acceptance occurs when the offeree agrees to be mutually bound to the terms of the contract by giving consideration, or some type of value such as money, to close the deal. The decision to accept or decline an offer can only be made by the offeree. Furthermore, an offer is accepted once it is communicated to the offeror, this form of communication can be presented in many ways, one form of communication is through the postal rule. An example of communication can be taken in the case of Brogden v Metropolitan Railway (1877) , where there was no verbal communication, however there was a contractual communication. This made it efficient enough to bind the two parties into a legally binding contract, despite there being no verbal acceptance. Under the postal rule, the acceptance of an offer is taken into effect once the letter is posted, rather than communicated .

On October 4th, 2016 Homer calls a company known as Pest Patrol and speaks with Christine, a representative, he then states his issue and gets an offer of £400 for the fumigation services, which he accepts over the phone. At this point, Homer has accepted a unilateral contract, where only one party assumes an obligation under the contract . In this case, the party assuming an obligation is Pest Patrol and their duty is to provide the fumigation services in return for money. An example of this can be seen by the Great Northern Railway Co v Witham case, where it was held the claim is allowed because there was no obligation for the claimants to order materials, however the defendant was obliged to deliver as per his tender. On October 5th, 2016, Homer receives contracts from Pest Patrol stating the agreement of £400 pounds for the fumigation service as the conditions of the offer. After signing and sending the contracts to Pest Patrol on October 5th, 2016, Homer doesn 't hear back from the company for numerous days. On October 11th, 2016, Homer attempts to revoke his offer with Pest Patrol by sending a letter, criticising their speed and informing the company to rescind his acceptance. However, Homer had already accepted the offer through the postal rule which states, the acceptance takes effect once the mail has been