2. ACCEPTANCE No contract comes into existence until an offer is accepted and, in most cases, that acceptance is communicated to the offeror.
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6. AA negotiated to buy some steel from RR, and RR made an offer with a stipulation that acceptance be notified only on a pre-printed form. AA accepted by letter and then sought to cancel their acceptance. The Court of Appeal said there was no valid acceptance and hence no binding contract, but added obiter that it might be possible to say in some cases that those in RR's position had waived the condition as to the mode of acceptance, expressly or
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26. An offeror sent by Telex a notice of withdrawal; it was sent at around 5.45 one afternoon but not read until the next day even though the receiving office had been staffed until 6.30. The Court of Appeal agreed on the facts that the withdrawal was effective from its arrival, but differed as to the legal rule to be applied. Megaw LJ said that if a notice arrives at the address of the person to be notified, at such a time and by such a means that it would in the normal course of business come to his attention on its arrival, he cannot rely on his own or his servants' failure to act in a businesslike manner to postpone the effective time of the notice. Cairns LJ, however, felt that the sender should not rely on the recipients' reading every communication at once, and that in some circumstances a notice arriving late in the working day might quite legitimately not be "received" until the following morning.