Q: At 9.00 am on Monday 13 August, Maurice, a car dealer, sends a telex to Austin offering to sell him a rare vintage car
The price Maurice offered was £50,000. Austin receives the telex at 9.15 am and telexes his acceptance at 1.00 pm. Austin is aware that Maurice’s office is closed for lunch between 1.00 and 2.00 pm. On his return to the office, Maurice does not bother to check whether he has received a telex from Austin and at 2.30 pm receives an offer for the car from Ford, which he accepts. At 4.00 pm Austin hears from another car dealer that Maurice has sold the car to Ford. He is advised that it will cost him an additional £2,000 to buy a similar car and he immediately sends Maurice another telex demanding that the original car be sold to him. Maurice receives this telex at 5.00 pm, at the same time as he reads the acceptance telex. Advise Austin of his legal position and what remedies, if any, are open to him
A:
Based on the unit of currency (£), it looks like this takes outside the U.S., possibly in the UK? Because this forum deals largely with U.S. laws and courts, a solicitor or attorney in the applicable jurisdiction should advise. It is complex for a real-life setting, but must be assumed to be one, since students never use Justia to pose questions from their Contracts courses.
In the remote possibility that a student was analyzing this for a Contracts class, some of the things they might look into would be offer, formation of acceptance, specific performance, and the "mailbox rule," a valuable doctrine which frequently confronts attorneys in the age of electronic communications. Good luck
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