Question: "Daniel owned some out-of-town real estate which Paul had been eyeing for some time. On June 1, Daniel's real estate agent passed along an offer to Paul, whereby Daniel offered to sell Paul that land for $590,000. The offer was expressly to be "open" until June 8 and acceptance had to be in writing. Paul was delighted and even more pleased to learn from the realtor that there was plenty of time to consider the offer and that no one else was "dealing on the property." On June 3, the real estate agent gave Paul some bad news: Daniel had unexpectedly sold the property to someone else. Paul replied, "Well I accepted last night by initialing Daniel's offer so Daniel is clearly already in a contract with me. And I'll hold him to it." After hanging up, Paul wrote out a formal acceptance and delivered it, along with the initial offer, to Daniel. Is Paul in a contract with Daniel?"

Additional resource: Area of Law and Present Legal Issue(s): Contract law and Real Estate Law (assumed to be NS)

According to the case presented over here, we think that offer has not even been accepted legally and one can think that this offer is done off the table. Under the Nova Scotia Real estate commission(Nova Scotia Commission, 2017) if the buyer gives the signed contract letter with the clauses mentioned in it and signed by the seller of accepting the conditions and offer then Paul can be said that he is in a contract with Daniel. In the above case scenario, Daniel just said yes to the property verbally to Paul without any agreement letter which showed Paul showed laziness and in this situation if Daniel gets the instant offer with good amount of money which will be much above $590,000 then it is fair that Daniel can go with them as he is not bound into any contract. According to us, Paul is not in contract with Daniel and Daniel is able to accept the offer in his interest unless and until he has not signed any agreement. Moreover, this is inclined towards trust issues where law does not accept trust issues legally.

Question that needs to be answered:

Elements of the Legal Issue(s): Did the agreement enter into a binding contract? Is it enforceable?