Invitation to treat : a primary ingredient of contract

Invitation to treat (or invitation to bargain in the United States) is a Contract Law term. It comes from the Latin phrase invitatio ad offerendum and means an "inviting an offer”. An invitation to treat is “an expression of willingness to negotiate. A person making an invitation to treat does not intend to be bound as soon as it is accepted by the person to whom the statement is addressed." 

 

 Invitations to treat include the display of goods; the advertisement of a price or an auction; and an invitation for tenders (or competitive bids). There may however be statutory or complementary obligations, so Consumer Protection laws prohibit Misleading Advertising at auctions without reserve there is always a duty to sell to the highest bona fid bidder. But the general rule is that unlike an actual offer, an invitation to treat is not binding. The "inviter" can change his or her mind.

 

The clearest example of an invitation to treat is a Tender process. This was illustrated in the case of Spencer V Harding (1870) LR 5 CP 561. Where the defendants offered to sell by tender their stock and the court held that they had not undertaken to sell to the person who made the highest tender, but were inviting offers which they could then accept or reject as they saw appropriate.

 

 For an offer to be capable of becoming binding on acceptance must be definite, clear, and final. If it is a nearly preliminary move into negotiation which may lead to a contract, it is not an offer but an INVITATION TO TREAT. The offeror must not merely have been feeling or not merely initiating negotiations from which an argument may or may not in time result. The important point to note is that an Invitation to treat not being an offer but a phenomenal preliminary to the offer is not capable of an acceptance which will result in a contract.

==============================================================================

This site is mainly dedicated for Students of Law Schools, Law Universities, Students of Higher Education in Law, Admission in Law Schools, Scholars in Law, Students of Bar-at-Law, Law admission information, College of Law, Law Notes, Law Training, Law Tuition,  Law Study Guidelines, Business Law