Contract Law

A wrote to B offering to sell a car for 50000 & promise to keep the offer for 1 week. Any contract bw A & B?

1) B replied inquiring whether A would take 45000 for the car, but no reply to this letter, wrote a further letter within the week agreeing to buy the car for 50000. but 2nd letter was lost in the post.

As a matter of principle, counter offer destroys the original offer, and the original offer is no longer capable of being accepted. However, the counter offer must be communicated to A for it to be effective. There is no information in the question to tell whether the counter offer has actually been communicated to A or not. If the counter offer was not communicated to A, the original offer would still be capable of being accepted when B changed his mind and sent out his 2nd letter.

Under the posting rule, a postal acceptance takes effect when it is posted. So even if it was lost in the post for whatever reason, there is a binding contract between A and B under which B agreed to buy and A agreed to sell a car for 50000 when B posted his second letter, provided that (a) the counter offer was not communciated to A prior to B sending out his second letter, and (b) the letter was sent within one week from the original offer, as A only promised to keep the offer for 1 week, after which the offer would have lapsed and not capable of being accepted.

2) Bf the week was over, A, without inform B, sold car to C for 48000.. B who heard from a friend A might be intending to do this, wrote within the week purporting to accept A's offer.

If A sold the car within one week of his original offer to B, then B would still be able to accept the offer and sue A for breach of contract, as the offer cannot be withdrawn by A before the end of the week.

yes there will be a contract when A promised to sell the car for 50,000 and B accepted it. however, since the first offer was rejected by B, the contract ended. the counter offer by B, the 45,000, marked the end of the first contract, not the timed period offered at the beginning.