耶鲁大学-美国合同法笔记-第5周

EverEver- -Tite Roofing v. GreenTite Roofing v. Green- - Perance as Acceptance Perance as Acceptance 实际履行作为承诺实际履行作为承诺 [SOUND] Today, were going to learn about a case where starting the perance of a contract constituted acceptance. 承诺履行合同 As you already know, its possible to accept a contract without verbally saying I accept or signing your name on the dotted line. We have already encountered this when we discussed implied in fact contracts. Because perance, say, a restaurant server bringing you your food, is one way to show that [COUGH] a restaurant was agreeing to the deal. More generally, explicit offers, by default, can be accepted by any reasonable means. And an offerees perance is one important way that an offeree can accept an offer.受要约人履行合同是非常重要接受要约的方法。Ever-Tite Roofing Corporation versus Green was decided by the Court of Appeals in Louisiana in 1955. You might have noticed that a judge with the last name Ayres wrote the opinion. In case youre wondering, he has no relation to me. The defendant, appellee Green, wanted someone to re-roof his house, and Green offered to hire the plaintiff and the appellate, Ever-Tite. The agreement was to become binding only upon acceptance or signature by an officer of the plaintiff, or by the plaintiffs commencement of the work. After receiving a satisfactory credit report, the plaintiff loaded its truck and drove to the defendants house to begin the work. To his surprise, the plaintiff found that another company has already started doing the repair work, and the defendant told the plaintiff to go home and not to per the contract. The plaintiff sued and the trial court found for the defendant, but the court reversed. [SOUND] [MUSIC] So lets begin simply. In this case, who is the relevant offeror and who is the offeree [SOUND] Well, the defendant Green is surprisingly the offeror. The plaintiff Ever-Tite is the offeree. Yet you might of noticed that Ever -Tite supplied the standard on which Green made the offer.The Ever-Tite salesman filled out the and Green, by signing it, became the offeror. Dont get confused by this fact. Its possible to be the offeror but not the drafter of the contractual offer. This happens whenever the offeror uses a prepared by the offeree. Before we get to the holding of the case, lets take a moment to understand the terms of the offer. Greens offer specified that it could be accepted by a home officers signature. Instead of empoweringempowering 授权授权 the salesperson to accept the offer, this mode of acceptance gave the homeoffice time to check the credit. Or to give the plaintiff a chance to make sure that the price offered by the salesman for the work was sufficiently remunerative. Another big benefit of delaying acceptance until the Greens offer was brought back to the home office. Is that it avoids the possibility that ten salespeople will enter into conflicting contracts at the same time. But Greens offer, again drafted by th