The terms of the offer are clear and unambiguous and the offeree accepts the offer according to its true sense, Although a mistaken party will not often be able to discharge the onus of showing that the other party, 118 The Canadian courts have been the most active common law courts explicating and developing this area of the law. com Pte Ltd30 that was primarily about unilateral mistake. Part of the training module included hands-on training with a new template for a Price Mass Upload function. The evidence incontrovertibly indicates that the first plaintiff himself entertained this view for the entire period he was in communication with the second and third plaintiffs. Phang, Controversy in Common Mistake [2003] Conv 247; Reynolds, Reconsider the Contract Textbooks (2003) 119LQR 177. . They are all well-educated professionals articulate, entrepreneurial and, quite bluntly, streetwise and savvy individuals. There are two types of orders relevant: market orders and limit orders. If stock of a product has been exhausted, a prospective purchaser cannot sue for specific performance or damages as he has merely made an offer that has not been accepted by the merchant. They were clearly anxious to place their orders before the defendant took steps to correct the error. The current general approach is correctly stated in Professor Jeffrey Pinslers Singapore Court Practice 2003 (LexisNexis, 2003) at para20/5/7: An amendment may be allowed even after both parties have made their closing submissions. In the absence of proper and full arguments on the issue of which rule is to be preferred, I do not think it is appropriate for me to give any definitive views in these proceedings on this very important issue. No modern authority was cited to me suggesting an intended commercial transaction of this nature could ever fail for want of consideration. u think this is the 1970s?? He was also a partner in what is described as a printing business. I drew counsels attention to Halsburys Laws of Australia (Butterworths, 1992), vol6 at para 110-5550 which states: A particular class of case which illustrates unilateral mistake as to the terms intended, known to the other party, is that in which an offer which would be very advantageous to the offeree is snapped up by the offeree. This thread helps to rationalise the development of the common law but ought not to be viewed as supporting the existence of a general test of commercial morality tantamount to the test of unconscionability invoked by equity. 21 The first plaintiff must have realised at the outset that he would have to explain with a certain measure of credibility the purport and significance of all his Internet communications between 1.00am and 3.00am on 13January 2003. (See for example the approach in Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1990] 1AllER 512.) When giving evidence, he struck me as cautious, taking great pains to convey the impression that his numerous online enquiries that morning were routinely carried out without any real inkling that an error had occurred. 56 He vacillated throughout his evidence between a propensity to embellish his evidence on the one hand and to hold back on the other. The product descriptions in all the other pages of the respective websites, at the material time, carried a full detailed description of all advertised products. In Chwee Kin Keong v. Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd ,1 one of the defendant's employees mistakenly uploaded the contents of a training template onto the defendant's website, resulting in the retail price of S$3,854 for a commercial laser printer on the website being replaced with the figure S$66. 34 He also visited the Digilandmall website to familiarise himself with their standard terms and conditions. Altogether, the second plaintiff purchased 180 units, opting for cash on delivery as the payment mode. Vincent. Indeed, in difficult cases, the courts in several common law jurisdictions have gone to extraordinary lengths to conjure up consideration. While this is the general principle for shop displays, it is open to a merchant to offer by way of an advertisement the mechanics of a unilateral or bilateral contract. There is therefore no pre-condition in law for a mistaken party to show an absence of carelessness to avail himself of this defence; the law precludes a person from seeking to gain an advantage improperly in such circumstances. If the common law continues to take precedence, then an essential mistake would void a contract ab initio. The leading Canadian decision in this area is the case of McMaster University v Wilchar Construction Ltd (1971) 22DLR(3d) 9 which, incidentally, was cited with approval by the Australian High Court in Taylor v Johnson. Such conduct is akin to that of an unscrupulous commercial predator seeking to take advantage of an error by an unsuspecting prey by pouncing upon it before the latter has an opportunity to react or raise a shield of defence. In Chwee Kin Keong v. Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd, one of the defendant's employees mistakenly uploaded the contents of a training template onto the defendant's website, resulting in the retail price of S$3,854 for a commercial laser printer on the website being replaced with the figure S$66. He said he had by then discovered from his Internet searches that the price of the laser printer was in the region of $3,000. 96 In an Internet sale, a prospective purchaser is not able to view the physical stock available. 153 These statements of jurisprudence are of cardinal importance in understanding and fashioning the law of contract. It was listed at the price of $66, when it was advertised on the official HP website for $3,854. 1.47K subscribers Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2005] Facts The defendant, Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd, were an online IT company that sold related software and hardware from. Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd,( [2005]SGCA 2 ) . 135 The defendant however asserts that there were no concluded contracts with any of the plaintiffs on a number of grounds. 89 In the circumstances, I had little hesitation in allowing the amendments sought by the defendant. The law ought to take a practical approach in dealing with such cases if it appears that by exercising reasonable care the true facts ought to be known. He graduated with an accounting degree from NTU. The defendant is therefore entitled to recover in full its taxed costs from the plaintiffs. Take a look at some weird laws from around the world! The plaintiffs and the defendant later reached an agreement to dispense with any further oral evidence, save for that of Tan Cheng Peng. I do not accept that there were no discussions between them on the price posting being an error. As for the common law on unilateral mistake, it is claimed that the acid test for its application is not satisfied. But it is difficult to see how that can apply here. Mistakes are usually synonymous with the existence of carelessness on the part of the mistaken party. Their conduct in pursuing their claims cannot by any stretch of the imagination be characterised as having the slightest colour of being legitimate regardless of whether the subjective or objective theories are applied and whether common law or equity is applied in adjudicating this matter. The neutral citation of the case Chwee Kin Keong and others v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd is as follows: This citation tells us that this was the 71st case in 2004 decided in the Singapore High Court. The same view is echoed in Halsburys Laws of Singapore vol7 (Butterworths Asia, 2000) at [80.164]. This is a case about predatory pack hunting. It has been a fertile source of academic debate, but in practice it has given rise to a handful of cases that have merely emphasised the confusion of this area of our jurisprudence. Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. They deny having had any communications amongst themselves about the possibility, let alone probability, that the price posting on the website could have been a mistake. Chwee Kin Keong and Others v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2004] 2 SLR 594; [2004] SGHC 71 Suit No: Suit 202/2003/E Decision Date: 12 Apr 2004 Court: High Court Coram: V K Rajah JC Counsel: Tan Sok Ling, Malcolm Tan and Mohan Das Vijayaratnam (Tan S L and Partners) for plaintiffs, Philip Fong Yeng Fatt and Doris Chia Ming Lai (Harry Elias As a lawyer, he appears to have been indispensable in the plaintiffs attempts to hold the defendant to the bargain. I found their attempts to play down the impact of the statements which they had, to all intents and purposes, willingly and deliberately made earlier, unconvincing. Desmond: 13/01/20 01:47 u make me greedy, Scorpio: 13/01/20 01:47 ok lor if you insist . Indeed this appears to be the underlying rationale for the unique legal characteristics attributed to an invitation to treat; see Grainger & Son v Gough [1896] AC 325 at 333334, Esso Petroleum Ltd v Commissioners of Customs & Excise [1976] 1All ER 117 at 126. In the context of the present proceedings, the extra-judicial observations of Lord Steyn in Contract Law: Fulfilling the Reasonable Expectations of Honest Men (1997) 113LQR 433 at 433 are particularly apposite: A thread runs through our contract law that effect must be given to reasonable expectations of honest men. In addition to the law of (especially, unilateral) mistake, issues relating to the formation of a contract will be considered (including the law relating to offer and . 138 Effectively, the defendant was attempting in this contention to assert that it could have its cake and eat it as well. 123 One view maintains that the mistaken party can either attempt to have the contract declared void at common law if the mistake is fundamental or radical, or alternatively seek a remedy in equity, which could include rescission. This provision acknowledges that the essential framework of an electronic contract needs to be considered in the usual manner; in other words, principles of contract formation, consideration, terms and conditions, choice of law and jurisdictional issues need to be examined. It cannot also be seriously argued that there was no intention to enter into a legal relationship. Whether the parties have reached agreement on the terms is not determined by evidence of the subjective intention of each party. He graduated from NTU as a bachelor of business studies, specialising in financial analysis. 13 The first plaintiff, Chwee Kin Keong, is 29 years old. Normally, however, the task involves no more than an objective analysis of the words used by the parties. The e-mails had all the characteristics of an unequivocal acceptance. 53 He claimed that seeing the same price on the Digilandmall website confirmed his view that there had been no mistake. 48 The third plaintiff annexed to his affidavit the transcript of the Channel NewsAsia report where he was quoted. Solicita tu prueba. Taking into account the nature of the claims, the conduct of these proceedings by the plaintiffs and how the case for the plaintiffs unravelled, it would not, all things considered, be appropriate to interfere with the normal order of costs which ought to follow the result. Before dealing with the point of real substance, it is appropriate to briefly deal with two of the less meritorious contentions advanced. The essence is not so much in the nature of the amendment but rather in the consequences flowing from any amendment to the pleadings. His communications with the fifth plaintiff, a lawyer, on the efficacy of the terms and conditions also lead to the ineluctable conclusion that he harboured anxieties whether this astoundingly good deal would be honoured when the error was discovered. Having said that, this exception must always be prudently invoked and judiciously applied; the exiguous scope of this exception is necessary to give the commercial community confidence that commercial transactions will almost invariably be honoured when all the objective contractual indicia are satisfied. They have taken into account both the English and Australian authorities in distilling the jurisprudence in this area. In its pleaded case, the defendant asserts that the automated e-mail responses it sent out in the early hours of 13January 2003 did not confirm that stock of the laser printers were available and would be delivered. In addition, each of the confirmatory e-mail responses states at the outset: [W]e will be calling you in the near future to deliver the products to the address shown below. It is, in large measure, determined by making an objective appraisal of the exchanges between the parties.

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