Facts
The case involved two parties in the sale of wool. On 2 September, the defendants wrote to the plaintiffs offering to sell them certain fleeces of wool and requiring an answer in the course of post. The defendants misdirected the letter so that the plaintiffs did not receive it until 5 September. The plaintiffs posted their acceptance on the same day but it was not received until 9 September. Meanwhile, on 8 September, the defendants, not having received an answer by 7 September as they had expected, sold the wool to someone else.
The defendants argued that there could not be a binding contract until the answer was actually received, and until then they were free to sell the wool to another buyer.
Read more about this topic: Adams V Lindsell
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.”
—Gustave Flaubert (18211880)
“Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.”
—Edith Hamilton (18671963)
“Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914)