47 i 00^'TKACTS AND SALES. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CONTRACTS AND SALES. 



If imrties enter into an agreement, they are not the less hound Inj it 

 became they send it to a soticitor to reduce it into form ; but the presump- 

 tion is, if they send it without having previously arranged to that 

 etfect, that they do not mean to bind themselves until it is reduced into 

 form {Ridgicay v. Wharton). AVhen an offer in ivriting is made by the 

 owner to sell an estate on specified terms, and this is unconditionally 

 accepted, there is a binding contract which neither party can vary ; but 

 the owner is entitled, at any time before his offer has been definitely 

 accepted, to add any new terms to his proposal, and if those are refused 

 the treaty is at an end. And so it was decided by the House of Lords, 

 in Honeyman v. Marryat, confirming the decision of the Master of the 

 Rolls. Thus where a person proposing to sell an estate receives an 

 offer, and his estate-agent answers, " He has authorized us to accept 

 the offer, subject to the terms of a contract being arranged between his 

 solicitor and yourself," the answer does not constitute a complete con- 

 tract ; and the vendor is at liberty to add other terms, and on their 

 non-acceptance to break off" the treaty (ib.). 



A vendor has duties inseparable from that character which he is bound 

 to perform, and cannot avoid by restrictive conditions of sale ; and hence 

 he is not justified in rescinding a contract under a restrictive condition of 

 sale reserving that power, when he has not answered the purchaser's 

 requisitions, or made an attempt to answer tlie objections to the title. 

 rer Sir J. Romitly M.R. {Greaves v. Witson). 



Where there is a contract with respect to a particular thing, and that 

 thing cannot be delivered owing to it perishing without any deftiult in 

 the seller, the delivery is excused. In the case of Howell and Coupland, 

 9 L. R. Q. B. 4G2, the defendant in the month of March entered into an 

 a"-reement to deliver to the plaintiff in September or October 200 tons 

 of Regent potatoes. The defendant planted in fact sixty-eight acres of 

 land witli potatoes, and this in an average year would have been amply 

 Bullicient to produce 200 tons of potatoes ; but a blight attacked the 

 crop, and the defendant was only able to deliver eighty tons. The 



