welcome to our sessions I am Jennifer Heusen in this session I will introduce you to one the basic concept of what a contract is and - an introduction to contract formation in particular we will focus on the principles of offer and invitation to treat now offer an acceptance together is termed agreement but our focus in this lecture will be an introduction to contract and the concept of offer and then contrasting it to the principle of invitation to treat now first starting with a basic concept of what a contract is the layperson would of course say that it is an agreement between two or more persons but that is what will distinguish you the budding lawyer from the layperson because throughout this series you will hear me tell you to go to source now in studying this or any other topic never ever rely solely on what a tutor says or a lecturer says or god forbid what a fellow student says or even what I may say to you check for yourself from source which for you as the law student of course means the experts and by the experts I mean the academics and the court decisions yes you must read the cases and if legislation is involved what a particular act says now it means that whatever we discuss here we will go to source now then what is a suitable definition of a contract well if you were to go to the source for the answer the first response in my view is from Professor trityl who says that a contract is an agreement giving rise to obligations which are enforced or recognized by law now he carries on by saying that the factor which distinguishes contractual from other legal obligations for example taught is that they are based on the agreement of the contracting parties now the Frederick Pollock for his part says that a contract is a promise or a set of promises which the law will enforce and of course not to be outdone we see Sir William Anson saying that the law of contract may be provisionally described as that branch of the law which determines the circumstances in which a promise shall be legally binding on the person making it so the starting point therefore we can see that the great minds of contract law are United not least that in the law of contract not all agreements will be an agreement that is enforceable in law so if we are dealing with a social arrangement for example say I ask my son to wash my car or if you are dealing with an illegal agreement so you and I agree that you will use my spare bedroom for the purposes of prostitution or if we are dealing with an agreement that is contrary to public policy so making an agreement which the law disapproves of then such agreements unfortunately as much as I would like the income from the proceeds of the spare bedroom will not be enforceable it is the enforce ability requirement which is significant in determining what is a contract now the three essential elements of a valid contract on the English law our agreement meaning offer and acceptance intention to create legal relations and of course consideration now by the end of this session we will have reviewed the contract element of agreement which is usually expressed in terms of offerin acceptance it is that meeting of the minds of those two parties the consensus added them that meeting of the offer with the corresponding acceptance that constitutes the agreement so our objective over this session are to know what is an offer and to be able to distinguish an offer from other forms of communication in particular what is an invitation to treat so we will know what is the correlation between offer and possibly acceptance and then what is meant by an offer and of course consider it in the context of invitation to treat well another could be defined as a proposal or a promise by one person who is called the offer or in law to enter into a contract on a particular set of terms with the specific intention of being bound by that promise as soon as the person to whom the promise is made call the offeree signifies his acceptance now that may sound a fairly long definition so let's put it another way it is we're from an objective standpoint there is an expression of willingness by the offer or to be bound by its terms once it is accepted by the offeree now then an offer may be made to an individual it may be made to a group it may be made to the general public so for example a reward for information or a reward for finding and returning a dog an offer may be written it may be spoken it may be implied by conduct now one important point for law students to remember is that what in fact amounts to an offer can and certainly does give rise to differences of opinion so for example during the bargaining process there may be a series of communications between the offer or on the one hand and the offeree on the other as they move towards a final agreement and so it may be difficult to be exactly sure whether a specific statement was an offer or whether it was only part of continuing negotiations between the parties it is these that you have to be careful of because examiner's tend to seize on and exploit these when they are writing contract law questions they want you to discuss the fine line distinctions by using the cases and going to source for academic commentary in determining if a particular communication is an offer or not now one possibly approach in determining whether there is an offer is to examine whether they were expected to bargain further were the parties expected to bargain further or whether the communications made to that point showed a clear willingness to be bound if the poor other party agreed or assented now this is easier said than done as the cases conflict at times in fact to understand the principle of offer any discussion must consider the two contrasting cases of Stora and Manchester City Council in 1974 and gives the Manchester City Council in 1979 now both cases were concerned with Manchester City Council's policy of selling off council houses to its tenants who are living in them now councils in England tend to be the largest social landlords and in a particular area and at any time Manchester City Council was controlled by the Conservative Party and this was an era when there was a Conservative Party policy to make home owners of their counts of tenants so basically persons who had been renting their properties now had the right to buy them and this was considered the right to buy scheme making people owners of their own property now mr. stora and mr. Gibson were two such tenants who wanted to buy their council house however control of Manchester City Council passed the Labour Party who of course took a more paternalistic view of selling of housing stock of the council and they resolved to discontinue the sale of council houses and what we will discuss next is how the council's communication to each of the two gentlemen was viewed by the court and the determination by the courts of the status of each communication how every cup therefore trityl Pollock and anthem say that a contract is a legally enforceable agreement the requirements of a contract are agreement meaning offer an acceptance intention to create legal relations and consideration and offer is an expression of willingness by the offer or to be bound once there is acceptance by the offeree we will then go into part two of course and we will continue with offer as well as the two cases raised earlier and in that segment we will look at the contrast in cases of Stora and Gibson and further consider the situations where an offer is shown as being distinct from an invitation to treat you