November 14th, 2012
I agree with Grotius – the 17th century Dutch jurist, in
that one can freely revoke their offer to agree/contract. To expand on his sentiment, one should be able
revoke an offer even after it has been accepted, in my opinion. Moreover, I view an offer and an acceptance
as just furthering the negotiation process until a definite agreement has been
stated – which of course would be when the situation becomes a win-win for both
parties; or so the possibility exists, anyhow.
If you find the last point blasphemous, hear this: Until the point where products or money or
whatever valuable consideration begins to change hands and does change hands,
everything is still up in the air. Larger
and more long-term deals may have some problems with this sentiment of mine,
but even there, nearly all terms of an agreement should be open to
re-negotiation at any time.
One should be able to revoke an offer at anytime, because such
seems to happen all the time anyhow.
Let’s say A has a couple of tickets to the big show this evening. He can’t attend or wants to sell the tickets
for the money, or whatever. B has
expressed an interest in buying the tickets.
A says he wants $100 each to sell.
B hesitates and says he will get back to A with his decision in a little
while. B decides to buy and contacts A
attempting to accept A’s offer of $100 each for the tickets. A now declines to sell saying he wants $175
each. For the purists in the crowd, assume
this is not a face to face discussion (let’s make it an email or cell phone
text offer or fax or something) and maybe A has received another offer for more
money than his initial $100 dollar offer in the interim since the time A made
the initial offer to B. Anyway, in this
hypothetical, no valid offer would have been apparent according to the proposed
doctrine and A is free to take the higher offer for the tickets.
AVT
