Acceptance before information about withdrawal
A fictional contract exercise expressly supplies this rule: an ordinary revocable offer ends when the offeree receives effective revocation or reliable information of an inconsistent act before acceptance. The exercise also states that no option contract or other irrevocability rule applies. An owner offers to sell an item on day one, sells it to someone else on day five, and receives the first offeree valid acceptance on day seven. The offeree remains unaware of the other sale until day eight. All other formation conditions are stipulated to be satisfied. A trainee selects a no-contract conclusion by silently assuming the offeree knew about the sale on day five. Students must apply the supplied rule to the actual sequence, without replacing it with an invented notice or a different jurisdiction rule.
1. What follows under the stipulated rule?
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On the supplied facts, effective revocation information had not reached the offeree before the valid day-seven acceptance. A contract forms under the stipulated formation conditions; the other sale can create separate performance or remedy issues.
2. What is wrong with the trainee reasoning?
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It adds knowledge expressly absent from the record. A rule about effective revocation cannot be applied as though the required receipt condition had already occurred.