Contract Law

Question 1

Contract Law

Special Characteristics

Answer 1

1. ) Pervasiveness in the average person’s everyday activities.
2. ) basic principles of contract law are the underpinning of the more specialized business-related subjects, including sales and commercial paper partnership and corporation law, and other area.
3. ) Since the subject of contracts is essentially common-law in nature, the controversies that presented usually require the courts to examine earlier decisions handed down in cases involving similar factpatterns. Thus, the doctine of stare decisis is illumintated.

Question 2

Natue of a Contract

Answer 2

A special sort of agreement– on that the law will enfoce in some manner in the vent that one party does not perform its promse.

Even seriously intended, definite business agreemnts, however, are generally not enforceable unless three additional elements are present:

what the courts refer as consideration, capacity, and legality.

Question 3

Bilateral Contracts

Answer 3

Most contracts cnsist of the exchange of mutual promises, the actual performance of which is to occur at some later time. Such contracts, consisting of “apromise for a promise,” are bilateral contracts.

Question 4

Bilateral Offer

Answer 4

If the terms of an offer indicate that all the offeror wants at the present time from the offeree is a return promise– rather than the immediate perfornance of an act–then the proprosal can be called a bilateral offer.

Question 5

Unilateral Offers

Answer 5

Phrased in such a way tat they can only be accepted only by the performance of a particular act. Occur much less frequently than offers for bilateral contracts.

An example is the promise of a seller of property to pay a real eastate agent a commision when the agent finds a buyer for it.

If an offeree performs the requested act, he has accepted the ofer even if he has verbally expressed reservations.

Question 6

Express Contracts

Answer 6

As has been indivated, te essence of a contract is an agreement (an understanding) that has been arrived at in some fashion. If the intention sof the parties are stated fully and in explicit terms, either orally or in wiriting, they constitute an express contract.

Frequenty ln writing and of consderable lengths.

Question 7

Implied contract

Answer 7

Is one in which the promises (intentions) of the parties have to inferred primarily from their conduct and from the circumstances in which it occured,. It is reasonable to infer that a person who is getting a haircut in a barbersho actually desires the service and is willing to pay for it.

Question 8

Words and Conduct Test

Answer 8

Some agreements ar reached through the use of words and conduct both.

Question 9

quasi-contract

Answer 9

In contrast to express or implied contracts, exists only in those exceptional circumstances where a court feels compelled to impose an obligation upon person regardless of wether he or she had any intention of making a contract. Quasi-contracts are impled by law..

Necessary to promote an important public policy.

Also imposed only in circumstances wher the failure to impose such an obligation would result in one party receiving an “unjust enrightment”.

Question 10

Quantum meruit

Answer 10

as much as is deserved

Question 11

Limitations on quasi-contract

Answer 11

1. ) It cannot be invoked by one who has conferred a benefit unnecessarily or as a result of negligence or other misconduct
2. ) Quasi-contracts are contracts in fiction only, since they are not based upon an agreement between the partie. They are not “true” contracts.
3. ) A plaintiff generally will not be allowed quasi-contractual recovery from one person if he originally looked to another for compensation.

Question 12

Valid

Answer 12

A valid contract is one in which all of the required elements are present. As a result, it is enforceable against both parties.

Question 13

Voidable

Answer 13

Such contracts are referred to as voidable contracts. Contracts in which fraud is present fall within this category, because the law permits the one who has been defrauded to set aside the contract. Minors’ contracts are another common example of voidable contracts.

Question 14

Void contract

Answer 14

1. ) one of the parties is wholly incompetent at the time of contracting (such as a person who has been legally declared insane)
2. ) the purpose of the contract is totally illegal.

Label is used by the courts to distinguish such contracts from those which are merely voidable; and in that sense it is a useful term.

Question 15

Unenforceable contract

Answer 15

was valid at the time it was made but was subsequently rendered unenfoceable because of the application of some special rule of law.

Question 16

Negotiated Contracts

Answer 16

The terms of many contracts are agreed upon only after a certain amount of bargaining, or “dicerking”

After one party makes an offer to the other, for example, the latter–the offeree– may indicate that he or she will accept only if a specified change is made in the terms of the offer. Or the offeree may respond with a counteroffer, a different propsal from that of the original offer. Contracts that result from these kinds of exchanges are “negotiated contracts”

Contracts of adhesion, by contrast, are formed where one party–usually having greatly superior barganing power over the other – prepare the terms of a propsed contract and prresents it to the other party on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

“Unconsciounable” in nature.

Question 17

Executory and Executed Contracts

Answer 17

Once a contract is formed, it is an executory contract.

Once the performance has taken place, the contract is said to be an execudted contract.

Question 18

Contract law and sales Law

A special relationship

Answer 18

Contracts for the sale of goods–tangible articles of personal property such as automobiles, machine tools, grain, and items of clothing–are governed by both the general rules of contract law and provisions in Article 2 of the UCC.

“sales law” is simply a branch of contract law. The general rules of contract law apply unless there is aprovision in Article 2 of the UCC that applies a different rule.

However for sale of goods contracts, Article 2 of the UCC does soometimes prescribe a different rule that the gneral comon law rules would.