49. If the customer sues the supplier for breach of contract, is the customer likely to prevail?

The mutual assent necessary for a valid contract generally takes place through an offer and an acceptance. An offer is a statement or act that creates a power of acceptance. When a person makes an offer, he is indicating that he is willing to be immediately bound by the other person's acceptance without further negotiation. An acceptance is the offeree's manifestation of assent to the terms of the offer, made in a matter invited or required by the offer. The offeror is the master of his offer, which means he may prescribe the method by which it may be accepted. A revocation terminates the offeree's power of acceptance IF it is communicated to him before he accepts.

A purported acceptance that is conditioned on an offeror's assent to an additional or different term from those contained in the original offer is not a valid acceptance, but rather, a counteroffer.

Under Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) § 2-314, a warranty of merchantability is implied in every contract for the sale of a good by a seller who is a merchant with respect to goods of that kind.

A UCC firm offer is an irrevocable offer if made by a merchant, signed, explicitly giving an assurance that it will be held open, even without consideration.

When a seller without valid ownership of goods sells them to a purchaser who pays for those goods in good faith, this bona fide purchaser (BFP) for value may have the right to bring a claim for an interest in the goods. See UCC § 2-403(1).

C is correct. When the customer responded to the supplier's initial letter with an acceptance of the offer to sell the freezer for $10,000, a valid and enforceable contract was formed. Although the customer's responsive letter stated that it was conditioning the acceptance on receiving a warranty of merchantability, that «condition» was superfluous because this type of warranty is implied in every contract for the sale of goods by a merchant of that kind under UCC § 2-314. If the customer had added a condition that was not implied in the original offer and it either added or changed a term, it would have been a counteroffer rather than an acceptance, allowing the supplier to prevent the contract from forming. However, the customer will prevail because the supplier was already bound to the agreement when it tried to revoke.

A is incorrect. The customer's letter was a valid acceptance, not a counteroffer because the proposed condition was effectively no condition at all. As explained above, the warranty of merchantability is implied in all contracts for the sale of goods of this nature, which means it would not have added or changed any term of the offer originally made.

B is incorrect. When a party without valid title sells goods to a purchaser, but the purchaser pays value in good faith, that bona fide purchaser (BFP) may have an actionable claim for an interest in those goods, even if another party is the legal owner. The call of this question is whether the customer will prevail in a suit against the supplier. The buyer who purchased the freezer for $11,000 is not a party to this suit, so whether that person has a valid claim is not at issue. That buyer's mere purchase does not preclude the customer from suing the supplier for breaching the valid contract that existed between them.

D is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. The customer will prevail, but not because the supplier's letter was a UCC firm offer that was irrevocable. A firm offer must contain explicit assurances that the offer will remain open to the offeree, which was not the case here. The supplier merely sent a letter offering to sell the freezer for a specified amount, without any promise to keep it open. As such, it was not a firm offer. Nevertheless, the customer will prevail for the reasons stated above.