Rather, in my opinion, constructive knowledge alone will suffice to invoke equitys conscience. Having noted all this, I am nevertheless inclined towards the views expressed in the Great Peace Shipping case for the reasons articulated by Lord PhillipsMR. The payment mode opted for was cash on delivery. 10 News of the rather extraordinary laser printer pricing began to spread like wildfire within the local Internet community. His girlfriend, Tan Cheng Peng, is also a director and shareholder of the company in which he has a stakeholding with the first and second plaintiffs. The initial order for 30 laser printers was placed at round 3.45am while the second order for 300 units was placed at around 3.53am. The law may not imply a condition precedent as to the availability of stock simply to bail out an Internet merchant from a bad bargain, 104 The creases over the theoretical approach to adopt in determining the existence of contracts have for some time now been decisively ironed out in favour of the objective theory. 32 Satisfied with his enquiries in relation to the printer model, he returned to the HP website and placed an order for 100 laser printers at about 2.23am. Phang, Controversy in Common Mistake [2003] Conv 247; Reynolds, Reconsider the Contract Textbooks (2003) 119LQR 177. His revelation that he did not know if this is an error or whether HP will honour this purchase, not to mention the articulation of his hope that by the time you see this email, the price is still at S$66.00, 27 The first plaintiff obviously took the view that the advertisement should be acted upon urgently. be rebutted" (per Salmon LJ in Jones v. Padavatton (1969)). 39 The sequence of orders placed by the second plaintiff in the short space of an hour and a half deserves some mention. However, at the actual hearing of the applications, plaintiffs counsel opposed any amendments whatsoever to the defence and sought leave to withdraw the plaintiffs earlier unilateral amendments. 118 The Canadian courts have been the most active common law courts explicating and developing this area of the law. He claims he then accessed the US HP website either through a Google web search engine or by abbreviating the url of the HP website. 14 The first, second and fourth plaintiffs became acquainted with each other when they studied at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Added to his own purchases of 760 units, he was effectively responsible for the purchase of 1,090 laser printers. The decision ofV.K. It would be fair to say that such a person should not have any legitimate expectation that the contract in question will be either respected or sanctioned by court. 13 The first plaintiff, Chwee Kin Keong, is 29 years old. Desmond: 13/01/20 01:33 how many u intend to get? 89 In the circumstances, I had little hesitation in allowing the amendments sought by the defendant. 46 He was therefore aware, even before he made his first purchase, that the actual price of the laser printer was in the region of US$2,000. The evidence incontrovertibly indicates that the first plaintiff himself entertained this view for the entire period he was in communication with the second and third plaintiffs. 137 Furthermore, from the evidence adduced, it became clear that the defendant had intentionally put the words call to enquire instead of, say, the phrase subject to stock availability in an attempt to entice would-be purchasers to place orders with them. Such errors can be magnified almost instantaneously and may be harder to detect than if made in a face to face transaction or through physical document exchanges. There was no element of surprise or prejudice to the plaintiffs as the points raised had already been developed by the defendant and addressed by the plaintiffs. The law ought to take a practical approach in dealing with such cases if it appears that by exercising reasonable care the true facts ought to be known. There is one important exception to this principle. He placed his first order for 50 units at about 2.58am, and his second order for another 50 units at 3.22am, again through the HP website. The text of the e-mail further reinforces the point. In Great Peace Shipping Ltd v Tsavliris Salvage (International) Ltd, the English Court of Appeal decided that Solle v Butcher was wrong to hold that there was an equitable doctrine of common mistakes. See now, also, The sixth plaintiff is precluded from asserting his ignorance. 1.47K subscribers Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2005] Facts The defendant, Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd, were an online IT company that sold related software and hardware from. v . They were selling a HP laser printer and an employee accidently made a mistake as to the price of the printer on their website. This constituted more than a quarter of the total number of laser printers ordered. 75 Each of the automated confirmatory e-mail responses carried under Availability of product the notation call to enquire. Caveat emptor remains a cornerstone of the law of contract and business relationships. Though the actual price of the laser printer was $3,854, the defendant had on 8January 2003 mistakenly posted the price at $66.00 on its websites. The most that the court can do in these circumstances is to refuse E [the other party, who wants the contract held void] specific performance, which lies in the discretion of the court and will probably be refused where E has been guilty of some degree of sharp practice. Cory had chosen this mode of communication; therefore he Despite the general views expressed in Taylor v Johnson (1983) 151CLR 422 on equitable mistake, it seems to be generally accepted in Australia as well, that this class of cases requires special mention and consideration. In the final analysis, it would appear that the likely existence of an internal error in pricing was clearly within his contemplation. NZULR, vol. Because it was simply a matter of time before the error would inevitably be noticed and the pricing inevitably corrected. - Rebutting presumption: "The question [whether or not there is a binding contract] must depend on the This contention is wholly untenable. The prospective buyer has to make an offer to purchase which is then accepted by the merchant. Abstract The decision of V.K. A prospective purchaser is entitled to rely on the terms of the web advertisement. The plaintiffs and the defendant later reached an agreement to dispense with any further oral evidence, save for that of Tan Cheng Peng. He was also involved in initiating the Channel NewsAsia report (see [78] and [79] infra). The Vienna Sales Convention (the Convention) applies in Singapore as a consequence of the Sale of Goods (United Nations Convention) Act (Cap283A, 1996Rev Ed). Imagine the effect of this negative publicity on your future sales! How could one seek to calculate the profit margin before finding out the true market price of the laser printer? The essence of snapping up lies in taking advantage of a known or perceived error in circumstances which ineluctably suggest knowledge of the error. I found their attempts to play down the impact of the statements which they had, to all intents and purposes, willingly and deliberately made earlier, unconvincing. In terms of chronological sequence, the initial page accessed was the shopping cart, followed by checkout-order particulars, checkout-order confirmation, check-out payment details and payment whether by cash on delivery or by credit card. Civil Procedure Pleadings . Case name. They are not mechanical rules to be applied in a vacuum, devoid of a contextual setting. Interestingly, Desmond also remarked to the first plaintiff that he wasnt greedy before I tok to u. A contract is normally concluded when an offer made by one party (the offeror) is accepted by the party to whom the offer has been made (the offeree). MrYeow said: After we ordered, the very next day, some of us have even gone up to talk to buyers in the market about the units. Solicita tu prueba. . Their reference to arbitraging was a nebulous fig leaf designed to legitimise their conduct in a cloak of legal and commercial respectability. After the defendant intimated that it would not be delivering the laser printer, he sent an e-mail excoriating it, asserting, I felt that I had done all that was conceivably within my means to ensure that the Price was. 17 Having called the second and third plaintiffs at about 2.00am, the first plaintiff also sent them, via e-mail, a weblink of the relevant HP website pages. The plaintiffs are, however, entitled to the cost of the amendments, in any event, which I fix at $1,000. 146 A purchaser in a case of apparent unilateral mistake, who purchases for genuine own use a product, may not always be viewed as guilty of engaging in snapping up. He graduated from NTU as a bachelor of business studies, specialising in financial analysis. 102 Inevitably mistakes will occur in the course of electronic transmissions. Normally the contract is only concluded when the acceptance is communicated by the offeree to the offeror. The elements of an offer and acceptance are, 139 Next, the defendant contends that no consideration passed from the plaintiffs to them. Article24 of the Convention states: For the purposes of this Part of the Convention, an offer, declaration of acceptance or any other indication of intention reaches the addressee when it is made orally to him or delivered by any other means to him personally, to his place of business or mailing address or, if he does not have a place of business or mailing address, to his habitual residence. 122 For now it appears that a mistaken party can have two bites at the cherry. This thread helps to rationalise the development of the common law but ought not to be viewed as supporting the existence of a general test of commercial morality tantamount to the test of unconscionability invoked by equity. 151 The claims by the plaintiffs are audacious, opportunistic and contrived. The decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal in, 25 The law of mistake was discussed in depth by McLachlinCJBC in. The case of, The offer was wrongly expressed, and the defendants by their evidence, and by the correspondence, have satisfied me that the plaintiff, 116 The term snapping up was aptly coined by JamesLJ in, 117 It should be emphasised that this stream of authority is consistently recognised by all the major common law jurisdictions. I drew counsels attention to Halsburys Laws of Australia (Butterworths, 1992), vol6 at para 110-5550 which states: A particular class of case which illustrates unilateral mistake as to the terms intended, known to the other party, is that in which an offer which would be very advantageous to the offeree is snapped up by the offeree. In common mistake, both parties make the same mistake. There must be consensus ad idem. To determine the profit potential, the second plaintiff had to take steps to ascertain the true market price of the laser printer which he did. 40 When the fourth plaintiff responded to the first plaintiffs mass e-mail, he copied his response to the second plaintiff. Disclaimer: This work was produced by one of our expert legal writers, as a learning aid to help law students with their studies. Claiming he was in a light-hearted kind of mood during his ICQ (acronym for I-Seek-You) conversation with Desmond, he insisted that this conversation should be taken neither seriously nor literally. 44 He made his first purchase of ten laser printers at about 2.42am. By their own admission, they made Internet searches through various search engines to ascertain the profits they could make. There is therefore no pre-condition in law for a mistaken party to show an absence of carelessness to avail himself of this defence; the law precludes a person from seeking to gain an advantage improperly in such circumstances. Lord Griffiths in Ketteman v Hansel Properties Ltd [1987] AC 189 at 220 stated: [T]o allow an amendment before a trial begins is quite different from allowing it at the end of the trial to give an apparently unsuccessful defendant an opportunity to renew the fight on an entirely different defence. Normally the contract is only concluded when the acceptance is communicated by the offeree to the offeror. They have taken into account both the English and Australian authorities in distilling the jurisprudence in this area. Introduction The decision of V.K. This is essentially a matter of language and intention, objectively ascertained. He seemed to suggest that in a number of cases going as far back as Cundy v Lindsay (1878) 3App Cas 459, the contracts in issue therein should be treated as only being voidable in equity: see Solle v Butcher at 692, Lewis v Averay [1972] 1 QB 198 at 207 and dicta in Magee v Pennine Insurance Co Ltd [1969] 2 QB 507 at 514 where he opined that: A common mistake, even on a most fundamental matter, does not make a contract void at law: but it makes it voidable in equity. When notified and satisfied that this transaction was successful as well, he placed a final order at 4.21am for ten laser printers on the HP website, charging this to his credit card. LOW, Kelvin Fatt Kin. In any event, it does not appear that she disclosed the whole truth of what she knew. In light of these general observations, I now address the law on unilateral mistake. Desmond: 13/01/20 01:43 coz the HP laser colour printer sells for at least 3 to 4k outside, Desmond 13/01/20 01:44 from US I heard is about USD 2k, Desmond 13/01/20 01:44 its HP and Laser and Coloured. We are, Our conclusion is that it is impossible to reconcile, In this case we have heard full argument, which has provided what we believe has been the first opportunity in this court for a full and mature consideration of the relation between, 129 The careful analysis of case law undertaken by that court yields a cogent and forceful argument that Lord DenningMR was plainly attempting to side-step, 130 It can be persuasively argued that given (a)the historical pedigree of the cases, (b)the dictates of certainty and predictability in the business community and (c)the general acceptance of the existence of distinct common law rules, it is preferable not to conflate these concepts. This could account for the substantial number of Canadian cases in this area of the law. While the first plaintiff was the source of the information concerning the price posting, the second plaintiff actively communicated with all of the plaintiffs (save the sixth plaintiff), throughout the material period. The case of Hartog v Colin & Shields [1939] 3All ER 566 is incontrovertibly the leading authority in this area. Often the essence of good business is the use of superior knowledge. (See for example the approach in, 142 The plaintiffs were bound by personal relationships as well as past and present common commercial interests. Evidence was given that if phone calls were indeed placed, they would from time to time limit the number of sales. Slade, in a well reasoned article written not long after Solle v Butcher was decided, asserted: In general, it is submitted that there are no cases which support the proposition that in cases of unilateral mistake, V [the enforcing party] may obtain this relief where the contract is not void at law and there has been no misrepresentation. Homestead Assets Sdn Bhd v. Contramec . In Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2004] 2 SLR (R) 594 (" Digilandmall.com "), the plaintiffs concerned placed orders over the Internet for a total of 1,606 Hewlett Packard commercial laser printers on the defendant (seller's) websites. 83 The defendant maintained that there was no element of surprise and/or prejudice arising from the amendments. Scorpio: 13/01/20 01:24 huh?? Established common law principles, in the arena of mistake, ought not be trifled with unless they are so obviously anachronistic and ill-suited to commercial and legal pragmatism. If stock of a product has been exhausted, a prospective purchaser cannot sue for specific performance or damages as he has merely made an offer that has not been accepted by the merchant. The amounts ordered and the hurried and hasty manner in which the orders were executed are of cardinal importance. Ltd.1 has the makings of a student's classic for several reasons: it presents a textbook example of offer and acceptance; it is set in the context of internet contracting; it involves the use in evidence of email, instantaneous messaging, and short messaging system (SMS); and it .
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