Section 2(a) – When a person promises or proposes something to another party with the intention that his promise/ proposal would be accepted by that other party, he is said to make an offer.

Section 4(1)- If  the offeree  does not know about the offer,  the offer itself is not valid. Thus, there be no binding contract.

Section 3- therefore mere intention to accept without communication the acceptance to the offeror does not give rise to valid and binding contract.

Section 4 (2)- the communication of an acceptance is complete, as against the acceptor, when it comes to the to the knowledge of the proposer.

Case:-

     The Australian government offered a reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of persons responsible for the murder of 2 police officers.

Mr. X and Mr. Clarke were arrested. Clarke then give information which lead to the arrest of another person  Mr. Y . Both Mr. X and Mr. Y were later convicted for the offence and Clarke who was not guilty was release. Clarke later heard about the reward and claimed it.

Held: his claim is failed. The information given by Clark was only to release himself and not in response to the offer.

 

Application:-

      Base of law that, that harris make a offer on in local newspaper about is lost camera and the reward who found the camera. And govinda return the camera without knowing the offer that harris make in the newspaper.it show that govinda don’t have communication of the harris make in the local newspaper. So we can assume that there is an offer but there is no acceptance in her situation.

      We can apply the decision of court in the case of R v Clarke (1927) where by the court held his claim failed.  The information by Clarke was only to release himself and not in response to the offer.  The court also decide the same judgment in second case, namely in the case of Taylor v Laird (1956) which the court held display Taylor did not communicate to Laird his offer to give his service to sail the ship back.  Therefor Laird did not know about the offer and did not have the opportunity either to accept or reject the offer.  Therefore Laird is not liable to pay the remuneration to Taylor.

By these two authority, again, we may say that there was no contract between Govinda and Harris.

 

     As to conclude in this case, govinda cannot claim the reward because there is no contract between  harris and govinda because govinda leak of knowledge of the contract.

Tham and Bee Ling's cases

ISSUE:-  whether there is any legal binding between Tham and Bee Ling?

 

LAW:-  

     Intention to create legal relation is one of the essential elements to form a valid contract. Without intention, a contract may not exist. This case base on second categories of agreements which is social, domestic and family agreement. These agreement are agreements that are not involving any business or profit making activities, which are normally made between family member or friends / acquaintances in their domestic and social relationship. For this kind agreement the law presumed that there is no intention to create legal relation between the parties.

The contract is not binding on the parties.

Examples:

 

Defendant was civil servant station in Sri Lanka. He had promised to pay his wife a monthly allowance as maintenance. His wife had stay in England and unable to follow the defendant to Sri Lanka because of her poor health.

Later the defendant failed to keep his promise and therefore the wife sued the defendant for breach of contract.

HELD: the defendant’s promise was not a legally binding and enforceable contract because the agreement was a family and domestic agreement and therefore it is presumed that the parties did not intend the promise to be legally binding contract.

 

APPLICATION:-  

     As we refer to the case of Tham and Bee Ling we may say that there is no agreement or contract  between Tham and Bee Ling.  It is because the promise made by Tham was not a legally binding and enforceable contract.

We can apply the decision of court in  the case of Balfour v Balfour whereby the court held the defendant’s promise was not a legally binding and enforceable contract because the agreement was a family and domestic agreement and therefore it is presumed that the parties did not intent the promise to be legally binding contract.

 

     The conclude is, we can say that Tham are doesn’t have to pay monthly billing to the his wife, Bee Ling since there is no contract between them.