Offer

Introduction

To create legal relations and Contents of the contract are concerned with the formation of the contract. The rules are considered by which the law answers two questions: Is there a contract? What are the terms of the contract? Agreement, consideration, and intention to create legal relations are closely interlocked.

In Malaysian Contracts Act under Section 2(e), an agreement comprises every promise and every set of promises, forming the consideration for each other, while under Section 2(h), a contract is an agreement enforceable by law. This distinction becomes particularly important when a contract is vitiated by factors such as illegality.

An elaboration of the concept of a ‘contract’ is to be found in Section 10(1), all agreements are contracts if they are made by the free consent of parties competent to contract, for a lawful consideration and with a lawful object, and are not hereby expressly declared to be void.

Offer

In any given case, to determine whether it is reasonable to infer the existence of an agreement, the court examines all the circumstances to see if the one party may be assumed to have made a firm ‘offer’ and if the other likewise be taken to have ‘accepted’ that offer.

An offer, to be converted into an agreement by acceptance, must consist of a definite promise to be bound provided that certain terms are accepted. The offeror must have completed his share in the formalization of a contract by declaring his readiness to undertake an obligation upon certain conditions, leaving to the offeree the option of acceptance or refusal.

It is noted in Malaysian Contracts Act under Section 2(a), when one person signifies to another his willingness to do or to abstain from doing anything, with a view to obtaining the assent of that other to the act or abstinence, he is said to make a proposal....