They are not entitled to the costs of the subsequent brief hearing, for reasons I now deal with summarily. 145 If the price of a product is so absurdly low in relation to its known market value, it stands to reason that a reasonable man would harbour a real suspicion that the price may not be correct or that there may be some troubling underlying basis for such a pricing. As the reports contradict portions of their present evidence, they have indirectly tried to cast doubt on the accuracy of the reports in so far as the reports referred to them. This is an area that needs to be rationalised in a coherent and structured manner. Added to his own purchases of 760 units, he was effectively responsible for the purchase of 1,090 laser printers. He classifies mistake in the following manner at 386: If attention is fixed merely on the factual situations, there are three possible types of mistake: common, mutual and unilateral. In the eyes of Singapore law, purported contracts entered into in similar circumstances are void ab initio. He claims visiting, inter alia, the Epinions and Hardwarezone websites, and though it appears that there was at the material time a discussion thread on the error on the Hardwarezone website, the fourth plaintiff denied having seen this. In Chwee Kin Keong v . The rationale for this is that a court will not sanction a contract where there is no, 150 The plaintiffs have contended that this court ought to follow the decision in, A thread runs through our contract law that effect must be given to, 152 This view has also found support in the Singapore context. 37 The second plaintiff was insistent in his evidence that there was no communication from the first plaintiff alerting him to the likely existence of the mistake; he contends the first plaintiff merely apprised him of a good deal and sent him the weblink to the HP website. It is postulated by many of the leading treatises that equity has a broad church incorporating a more elastic approach and a court of equity may rescind a contract, award damages or, in limited circumstances, fashion a remedy, to suit the justice of the matter. It is plain that the defendant had given careful consideration to this issue and was prepared to contract on the basis that it would be able to comply with any orders hence, there was no reference to any order being subject to stock availability. CISG-online is a research platform dedicated to the law and practice of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods adopted in Vienna on 11 April 1980 (CISG), as well as related areas of international commercial law. 105 It is not only reasonable but right that the objective appearance of a contract should not operate in favour of a party who is aware, in the eyes of the law, of the true state of affairs when, for instance, there is real misapprehension on the part of the mistaken party and when the actual reality of the situation is starkly obvious. It has been pithily said that the rules of procedure should be viewed as a handmaiden and not a mistress, to be slavishly followed. The issue could be critical where third party rights are in issue as in Shogun. The E-Mail Acceptance Rule. We can understand why the decision in Bell v Lever Bros Ltd did not find favour with Lord DenningMR. An equitable jurisdiction to grant rescission on terms where a common fundamental mistake has induced a contract gives greater flexibility than a doctrine of common law which holds the contract void in such circumstances. 81 Plaintiffs counsel thereafter responded somewhat curiously. There are, however, other sound reasons to argue against such a rule in favour of the recipient rule. Neither party raised any objections. 53 He claimed that seeing the same price on the Digilandmall website confirmed his view that there had been no mistake. . 33 See the Singapore Court of Appeal decision of Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd[2005] 1 SLR 502 (noted by Yeo, TM ' Great Peace: a distant disturbance ' (2005) 121 Law Quarterly Review 393 Google Scholar; KFK Low 'Unilateral mistake at common law and in equity' [2005] Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 423; and PW . 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. Singapore Court of Appeal. 149 It is clear from the authorities reviewed that such a contract, if entered into by a party with actual or presumed knowledge of an error, is void from the outset. 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 such cases, it would be unconscionable to enforce the bargain and equity will set aside the contract. It argues that the decision is both fair and economically grounded, and proposes an alternative view to that offered by classical contract law - one that sees fairness intertwined 1 In the early hours of the morning of 13January 2003, six friends, the plaintiffs in this case, placed orders over the Internet for 1,606 sophisticated Hewlett Packard commercial laser printers (the laser printer(s)). He also claimed to have talked to buyers in the market about reselling the laser printers and that the failure to procure the units would tarnish his reputation. This price was much lower than the actual retail price, and had been posted on the defendant's website by mistake. Rajah J.C. in the Singapore High Court in Chwee Kin Keong v. Digilandmall.com Pte. He is currently self-employed and is intimately involved in the multi-level marketing sales of aromatherapy products under the Bel-Air label. 113 The English Court of Appeal in Commission for the New Towns v Cooper (Great Britain) Ltd [1995] Ch 259, a case of common mistake, imported the concept of Nelsonian knowledge and applied the framework of various categories of knowledge outlined by Peter GibsonJ in Baden v Societe Generale pour Favoriser le Developpement du Commerce et de lIndustrie en FranceSA [1993] 1 WLR 509. [emphasis added]. CHWEE KIN KEONG v DIGILANDMALL.COM Pte Ltd (2005) SGCA 2.
Chwee Kin Keong Vs | PDF - Scribd 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. Scorpio: 13/01/20 01:24 huh?? One of the few cases on electronic contract formation in Singapore was Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall. Different protocols may result in messages arriving in an incomprehensible form. case concerning the purchase of laser printers from an online retailer, Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall 76 : To effect the purchase transactions on the respective websites, the plaintiffs had to navigate through several web pages. 127 The attempt to conflate the concept of common law mistake and the equitable jurisdiction over mistake is understandable but highly controversial. The text of the e-mail further reinforces the point. The second plaintiff made an enquiry as to the terms and conditions governing purchases through the HP website while the fifth plaintiff was perusing the conditions of the Digilandmall website. Altogether different considerations may arise if a party, at a late stage, seeks through an amendment to adduce further evidence to support that same amendment. The second issue was raised by me and touched upon contentions made by both parties in their written submissions. Placing an advertisement on the Internet is essentially advertising or holding out to the world at large. 35 In addition to these conversations, the second plaintiff also accessed the Epinions website and sent a related e-mail to the first plaintiff. To that extent, his evidence that he subsequently dismissed the notion altogether is unacceptable. His revelation that he did not know if this is an error or whether HP will honour this purchase, not to mention the articulation of his hope that by the time you see this email, the price is still at S$66.00 coz they might change it anytime, are all compelling in reflecting his state of mind and awareness that an error had occurred. This cannot be right.
Singapore Comparative Law Review 2019 (SCLR 2019) - Issuu com Pte Ltd30 that was primarily about unilateral mistake. That is sufficient in these circumstances. Being fully conscious of the pivotal nature of this point, I have duly accorded particular attention to the evidence and credibility of each of the plaintiffs. Needless to say, he could not satisfactorily explain why his previous solicitors had formed such a view when preparing his affidavit and why he had affirmed the same. He was also a partner in what is described as a printing business. He conducted the searches to ascertain what the laser printers true price was.
PDF Case Note - School of Advanced Study The contract stands according to the natural meaning of the words used. 137 Furthermore, from the evidence adduced, it became clear that the defendant had intentionally put the words call to enquire instead of, say, the phrase subject to stock availability in an attempt to entice would-be purchasers to place orders with them. This is a matter perhaps best left to law reform rather than to incremental judge-made law which may sow the seeds of confusion and harvest the returns of uncertainty.
clout_case_500 - UNCITRAL I find it inconceivable, to say the least, that the fifth plaintiff would have placed an order for 100 laser printers without the conviction that it was in fact a current market model with a real and substantial resale value. The issue in this case was whether the pricing was a mistake and if the contract would be fulfilled. In light of this, the parties did not address me on the issue of when the contract was formed, though this appears to be a relevant issue depending on which rule is adopted. 82 The plaintiffs strenuously opposed the defendants amendments principally on the ground it was made at a late juncture. The second, third, fourth and sixth plaintiffs are the only individuals who ordered more than a hundred laser printers each.
PDF Unilateral Mistake in Contract: Five Degrees of Fusion of Common Lawand Prior to being self-employed, he was a corporate banker with Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore, for four years. The fact that the acceptance was automatically generated by a computer software cannot in any manner exonerate the defendant from responsibility. With reference to the judgement, the case explores pricing mistakes by online stores. Comments Published in English: [2004] 2 SLR 594; [2004] SGHC 71. This is not a case about bargain hunting which is a time honoured and perfectly legitimate pursuit. Their reference to arbitraging was a nebulous fig leaf designed to legitimise their conduct in a cloak of legal and commercial respectability. 136 First, it was suggested that no contracts had been formed as all the contracts were subject to availability and that a failure to adhere to the directive call to enquire prevented the contracts from coming into existence. The pleadings, in such instances, merely formalise what is already before the court. 154 Interestingly, of the 784 persons who placed 1,008 orders for 4,086 laser printers, only these six plaintiffs have attempted to enforce their purported contractual rights. The plaintiffs could not coherently explain why neither they nor their lawyers had not attempted to correct the press reports at the material juncture. ThompsonJ of the Ontario High Court applied Hartog v Colin & Shields ([115] supra) and held that the parties were not ad idem and found that no contract had been formed. In addition, Tan Cheng Peng, the girlfriend and business associate of the third plaintiff, filed an affidavit detailing her communications with him. Given his professional and business background, he must have realised that the $66 price posting on the HP website was an error. When the defendants discovered this mistake on their website, they sent an email to the complainants to say they would not be fulfilling this order. (See for example the approach in, 142 The plaintiffs were bound by personal relationships as well as past and present common commercial interests. Rajah J.C. in the Singapore High Court in Chwee Kin Keong v. Digilandmall.com Pte. The complainants argued that they were not aware that this price was a mistake and wanted the binding contract to be fulfilled. We are, Our conclusion is that it is impossible to reconcile, In this case we have heard full argument, which has provided what we believe has been the first opportunity in this court for a full and mature consideration of the relation between, 129 The careful analysis of case law undertaken by that court yields a cogent and forceful argument that Lord DenningMR was plainly attempting to side-step, 130 It can be persuasively argued that given (a)the historical pedigree of the cases, (b)the dictates of certainty and predictability in the business community and (c)the general acceptance of the existence of distinct common law rules, it is preferable not to conflate these concepts. The programme trigger on that website automatically and instantaneously initiated the insertion of similar contents onto all three websites. In a physical sale, the merchant can immediately turn down an offer to purchase a product that has been advertised; otherwise he may be inundated with offers he cannot justify. Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd. Case Nos: Suit 202/2003/E (for the first instance), CA/30/2004 (for the appeal) in the High Court of Singapore (at first instance), Singapore Court of Appeal. It will firstly discuss the fact that such a tort Our academic writing and marking services can help you! Has an agreement been reached or not? The third plaintiff informed him that laser printers were being sold at $66 each and that these laser printers could be sold at a much higher price about a thousand plus.
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