Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:47

From: Peter Radan

Subject: Offer and Acceptance in Everyday Life

Dear Jason,

Here is that well-known passage of Lord Denning in Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking [1971] 2 QB 163 (on exclusion clauses) when he analyses tickets issued by machines in terms of offer and acceptance. At 169 he said:

We have been referred to the ticket cases of former times … [which] were based on the theory that the customer, on being handed the ticket, could refuse it and decline to enter into a contract on those terms. He could ask for his money back. That theory was, of course, a fiction. No customer in a thousand ever read the conditions. If he had stopped to do so, he would have missed the train or the boat.

None of those cases has any application to a ticket which is issued by an automatic machine. The customer pays his money and gets a ticket. He cannot refuse it. He cannot get his money back. He may protest to the machine, even swear at it. But it will remain unmoved. He is committed beyond recall. He was committed at the very moment when he put his money into the machine. The contract was concluded at that time. It can be translated into offer and acceptance in this way: the offer is made when the proprietor of the machine holds it out as being ready to receive the money. The acceptance takes place when the customer puts his money into the slot. The terms of the offer are contained in the notice placed on or near the machine stating what is offered for the money. The customer is bound by those terms as long as they are sufficiently brought to his notice beforehand, but not otherwise. He is not bound by the terms printed on the ticket if they differ from the notice, because the ticket comes too late. The contract has already been made. The ticket is no more than a voucher or receipt for the money that has been paid … on terms which have been offered and accepted before the ticket is issued.

Peter

Associate Professor Peter Radan
Department of Law
Macquarie University   NSW   2109
AUSTRALIA
Tel:      +61 (0)2 9850-7091

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