Southworth Vs Oliver Case Summary

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Southworth vs Oliver. The level of court that has decided this case is the Supreme Court. Decision made by the prior court Superior Court was to affirm the case. This case took place in the year 1978. Oliver wanted to sell some of his property and some of his Forest Service grazing permits to another person named Southworth. He then asked him if he wanted to purchase it. Later on, Southworth agreed to purchase it. In addition to, Oliver assumed that he was interested in only the property. Holliday who was another neighbor at the time was interested in the Forest Service grazing permits. In contrast, Oliver ended the conversation with the price of the land. Southworth state that he would be able to get all the financial information settled. …show more content…

When Southworth received the letter he probably assumed that it was an offer because it contained information like the value and price not a sure way of a valid offer. A contract law is an agreement that is enforced by law. What makes ups a contract is mutual assent, consideration, capacity and legality. Mutual assent just simply means that an offer was shown and followed by accepting or declining that offer including explicit terms but not limited. Consideration can include property or some act. For capacity, it is someone’s capability of satisfying elements in order to begin binding contracts. Legality refers to just a purpose and is required in every enforceable contract. The purpose of this contract was for Oliver to sell his land. This is because the offer can be sent to other people such as a third party. The letter does not need to have the term “offer”; it just has to be clear and straight forward to be considered a valid offer. Since it was a letter that had financial information such as the value of the property and other related things it looked like if it was an offer.. It was not really enforceable because it was not considered an offer although it did include the name of the property and the value. The way that the letter was worded was that it was clear and explicit, that is why he thought it was an offer. But, it was not. It didn’t state that it was a valid offer for the purchase of the