1. The essentials of a contract state that there must be two or more parties as a contract cannot be formed by a single person and upheld in court. There must also be an offer and an acceptance, as well as something called “consensus in idem” which is the understanding that all parties agree on the content of the contract before it is finalised. The parties must also have the intention to be legally bound and must be in a legal capacity to enter into the contract.
In this case I do not believe there is a contract as the shop keeper had the golf clubs in the window, and this meant the difference between an “offer” and a “willingness to negotiate”. This would mean that when the customer entered the shop and stated that he would like to purchase the golf clubs the contract had not been formed, because the shopkeeper is well within his rights to refuse the customer, even though the shopkeeper had the product in the window for purchase. This would not be the case if the product in the window had been labelled as an offer, in which case the customer could then enter the shop and agree to the offer. So, the golf clubs in the window was merely a willingness to negotiate.
The same can be said for the legal case Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain vs Boots the Chemists (1952). This is a case where determining the point of the “sale” was crucial. In this case it was determined that the goods on display within the pharmacy were a willingness to negotiate and not an offer, and there was only acceptance when the customer took the product to the register to pay and the pharmacist then agreed to sell that product to the customer. Because of laws that require listed poisons to be supervised by a registered pharmacist, that sale could be refused at the pharmacist’s discretion.
2. a) A restrictive covenant is something that can prohibit certain actions should a person want to