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Indiana University Studies 
tiffs three days late. The plaintiffs mailed at once a letter agreeing 
to accept the wool on the terms proposed; but the day before receiving 
this letter, the defendants (thinking that the plaintiffs were not going 
to accept because they had not heard from them in what they thought 
the usual course of post), sold the wool to another, and refused to 
deliver it to the plaintiffs on the ground that they had made no con- 
tract with the plaintiffs because their offer had not been legally ac- 
cepted. The plaintiffs then sued for breach of contract. 
Was the plaintiffs’ letter a valid acceptance of defendants’ offer? 
The court of King’s Bench held that it was a valid acceptance and 
therefore that defendants were liable to the plaintiffs for the nondelivery 
of the wool to them, because 
1. As a matter of interpretation, the plaintiffs answered in the 
course of post, because the delay in notification was due to the fault of 
the defendants. 
2. The acceptance took effect the moment it was despatched, be- 
cause the agreement required for a consensual contract is an objective 
agreement, not a subjective agreement, and there was an objective 
agreement (or expression of assent) in this 'case, either 
a. because the mail service may be regarded as the agent of the de- 
fendants, carrying their offer to the plaintiffs and receiving the plain- 
tiffs’ acceptance, so as to complete the agreement at that moment, on the 
theory that notice to the agent is notice to the principal; or 
b. because the offer of the defendants was an act which gave the 
plaintiffs the power to create an agreement by the acceptance of their 
conditional promise by despatching it by mail as the offer impliedly 
authorized them to do. 
When Jervis obtained a rule nisi for a new trial he in effect secured 
an order to the adverse party to show cause why such relief should not 
be granted, and when the court discharged the rule it denied the relief. 
If the court had granted the relief prayed for it would have made the 
rule absolute. 
Qwere , Would the selling of the wool to other parties have amounted 
to a revocation of the offer in any event? 
