Question

Apply the legal principles to the facts given below and select the most appropriate answer.

Legal Principles:

1. Consideration is something that moves from the promisee to the promisor, at the implied or express request of the latter, in return for his promise. The item that moves can be a right, interest, profit, loss, responsibility given or suffered, forbearance, or a benefit which is of some value in the eyes of law.

2. An offer may be revoked at any time before the communication of its acceptance is complete as against the proposer, but not afterward.

Factual Situation: Bournville ran a sales promotion whereby if persons sent in 3 chocolate bar wrappers and a postal order for f 100 they would be sent a record. Big Beats owned the copyright in one of the records offered and disputed the right of Bournville to offer the records and sought an injunction to prevent the sale of the records which normally retailed at f 1,000. Under the Copyright Act, retailers are protected from breach of copyright if they gave notice to the copyright holders of the ordinary retail selling price and paid them 6.25% of this. Bournville gave notice stating the ordinary selling price was f 100 and three chocolate bar wrappers. The issue is whether the chocolate bar wrappers formed part of the consideration?

विकल्प

• The wrappers were a mere token or condition of sale and not consideration.

• The wrappers did form part of the consideration for the sale of records despite the fact that they had no intrinsic economic value in themselves.

• The wrappers did not form part of the consideration for the sale of records as they had no intrinsic economic value in themselves.

• There was consideration for the sale of records in the form of postal order for Rs.100.

Answer 1

The wrappers did form part of the consideration for the sale of records despite the fact that they had no intrinsic economic value in themselves.

Explanation:

The issue that is to be tackled in the given case is that whether the wrappers formed the part of the consideration or not, in view of the guiding principle consideration can be anything which moves from the promise the promisor, at the implied or express request of the latter, in return for his promise. The courts do not inquire whether the deal between two parties was monetarily fair-merely that each party passed some legal obligation or duty to the other party. The dispositive issue is the presence of consideration, not the adequacy of the consideration. The values between consideration passed by each party to a contract need not be comparable. Thus option (b) is correct.