Business Law, Contract Law and Administrative Law
Business and contract law
Business law governs legal personality, agency, partnerships, companies and commercial transactions. Contract law tests the elements of a binding agreement: offer, acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, capacity and legality.
- An invitation to treat such as a catalogue or tender notice is not an offer; a bid may be an offer.
- Breach gives remedies: damages, specific performance, injunction or termination, subject to causation and mitigation.
- Agency binds the principal where the agent acts within actual or apparent authority.
Administrative law
Administrative law controls public decision-making through legality, procedural fairness, rationality and proportionality. Natural justice requires a hearing where rights are affected and an unbiased decision-maker. Ultra vires means acting beyond legal power. Reasons are increasingly required, but a reasoned decision need not be the 'right' one.
Worked example: A tender panel disqualifies a bidder for an alleged technical defect without telling the bidder or allowing a response. The decision may be procedurally unfair, even if the defect is real. The remedy is usually to set aside the decision and reconsider fairly, not to award the contract automatically. If the panel also applied a criterion not in the tender documents, the decision is likely ultra vires or irrational.
Traps
Treating a tender notice as an offer; saying consideration means goodwill; confusing void and voidable decisions; assuming fairness requires agreeing with the applicant.