I mean, we can certainly believe the Judge applied the law correctly, but also disagree that the law should be this way.

> I mean, we can certainly believe the Judge applied the law correctly, but also disagree that the law should be this way.

I'm not sure what issue you see with the law here. It seems to both be written and applied quite well. The Pepsi ad isn't really misleading or reckless, and obviously just a bit of fun hyperbole.

You should read the opinion. Ruling otherwise would essentially eliminate obvious jokes from advertising, and the opinion makes a good case for just how obvious the joke was.

No reasonable person can disagree with the legal principle at issue. You are suggesting that if you place an ad on, e.g., Facebook marketplace, you should be legally obligated to engage in the transaction with the first person to accept your asking price. Your position is indisputably absurd.

To my mind the transaction was already halfway complete though so it's not like someone advertising a house for 500,000 and deciding not to sell when offered the 500,000. It's more like a car dealership saying if you buy 100 cars from use we will throw in a free house and then after you buy the cars they say nevermind..

And government contractors often expend considerable time and effort developing a bid pitch in response to a solicitation. That doesn't mean they are entitled to the contract. Your proposed contract law regime would break the entire world.

Performance can be a method of accepting an offer and can create a contract. However, it's still necessary for there to be an offer and not just a generic solicitation.

I don't think gameswithgo's post, as written, presents any position on this specific judgment. (I read it as a more general statement that one can agree with a legal ruling while disagreeing with the underlying law(s)/precedent.)

> If you see a house advertised for sale at $500,000, the owners aren’t obligated to sell you the house for $500,000 or even to sell the house at any price. An advertisement alone isn’t a legally binding offer to complete a transaction.

It's been a long time since I took my business law classes, so I could be wrong, but I think they part of the test for whether something is false advertising or not is whether a reasonable person would believe the offer is legitimate.

For example, if a dealer has a car worth $20k and they're advertising it for $15k, a reasonable person would probably believe that's a legitimate offer. If that same dealer is advertising that same car for $100, a reasonable person wouldn't believe that is a real offer.

> False advertising also requires an intent to deceive or mislead, or at least evidence that the advertiser behaved recklessly in the advertisement

I still don’t know why ISPs and mobile carriers weren’t punished for their “unlimited” data plans. Today, they rely on throttling. However in the past they resorted to worse tactics

My guess is corruption. Barring that tho, they probably usually had asterisks everywhere.

> This isn’t uncommon. If you see a house advertised for sale at $500,000, the owners aren’t obligated to sell you the house for $500,000 or even to sell the house at any price.

In France, they do. If someone shows up and offers the advertised price, the deal is sealed as well. Even for $5m that you don’t have.

If they offer a lower price with conditions and the owner says yes, it is also binding. It can be on a simple free paper, and going through a notary is optional, even if recommended. The only exception is that the purchaser has 10 days of legal withdrawal after signing the contract (only €300 notary costs). The seller can’t withdraw, unless conditions were manually specified. I wasn’t aware of that when I made an offer by email, fortunately the landlord explained me that I should list the exceptions/conditions in my own interest…

Huh, that seems almost guaranteed to end up with a bunch of properties that prices on are just entirely unavailable. But putting a disclaimer on it seems like it'd be good enough for both rule sets...

> An advertisement doesn’t oblige the advertise to engage in a specific transaction with a customer.

While that's probably true, an advertisement does oblige the advertiser to actually be offering those things at the terms advertised to some non-misleading degree. Like, if an advertiser said "selling cars for $500" and they didn't actually have any $500 cars for sale, that's false advertising. If they had cars that were listed at $500, but they refused to sell them to anybody, that would also be false advertising.

> they wouldn’t be able to find anyone to testify that that PepsiCo actually thought they would be selling a Harrier jet

That's irrelevent. What is relevent is whether reasonble viewers outside the company might actually believe that. I think it would be perfectly reasonable for someone who didn't know much about harrier jets to think it might be a plane they could obtain and fly. It doesn't really seem like an "obvious" joke unless you know a lot about harrier jets - which most people don't.

> If you see a house advertised for sale at $500,000, the owners aren’t obligated to sell you the house for $500,000

Why?

Basic contract law. Is an invitation to offer not an offer Long running precedent for advertising in general.

I don't think you're correct. Bait and Switch advertising is not legal and the FTC will go after those that do that kind of thing.

> Bait and Switch advertising is not legal and the FTC will go after those that do that kind of thing.

Yes, but electing not to sell a unique item at an advertised price when a concrete offer is received is not the same thing:

---quote---

How does the FTC define "bait and switch" advertising?

It's illegal to advertise a product when the company has no intention of selling that item, but instead plans to sell a consumer something else, usually at a higher price. For more information, ask the FTC for its Guides Against Bait Advertising.

---end quote---

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/adv...

---quote---

Bait advertising is an alluring but insincere offer to sell a product or service which the advertiser in truth does not intend or want to sell. Its purpose is to switch consumers from buying the advertised merchandise, in order to sell something else, usually at a higher price or on a basis more advantageous to the advertiser. The primary aim of a bait advertisement is to obtain leads as to persons interested in buying merchandise of the type so advertised.

---end quote---

16 USC § 238.0, https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=69e59fd0c1f4966cfd...

> electing not to sell a unique item at an advertised price when a concrete offer is received is not the same thing

I disagree. I think it very much is the same thing. Unless they had other reasons (other than that they didn't want to honor their advertisement).

Both quotes you wrote down seem to quite clearly apply in this Pepsi case.

> I think it very much is the same thing.

It doesn't fit the regulatory definition for two key reasons:

(1) the regulatory definition of bait advertising turns on intent at the time of advertising, not decisions which happen later.

(2) the regulatory definition also turns on the intent being not to sell the thing adveritsed; even if the intent in advance is to sell it on different terms, that is not “bait advertising” (it may br prohibited by some other law or rule in some cases.)

> Both quotes you wrote down seem to quite clearly apply in this Pepsi case.

Even if you could construe the ad as an offer to sell anything, it wasn’t an offer to sell one thing to lure people in and sell them something else.

(And, of course, the Court already ruled in the case, in adjudicating a different claim to which the same question was relevant, that it couldn’t be reasonably viewed as an offer at all.)

1) Ok. And the intent at time of advertising was always not to see the jet. So I don't see your point. Still seems to apply at the time of advertising.

2) They did indeed not ever intend to sell the thing advertised. So again, what are you talking about?

I dunno man, I guess I just disagree.

> the court ruled that no one could reasonably view it as an offer to make the jet available as a reward

And I told you I think they were wrong.

> Even if that wasn't the case, what is the substitute product?

All of the other garbage they sold for Pepsi points...

> And the intent at time of advertising was always not to see the jet

And the court ruled that no one could reasonably view it as an offer to make the jet available as a reward.

Even if that wasn't the case, what is the substitute product?

> the court ruled that no one could reasonably view it as an offer to make the jet available as a reward And I told you I think they were wrong.

> Even if that wasn't the case, what is the substitute product?

All of the other garbage they sold for Pepsi points...

> it wasn’t an offer to sell one thing to lure people in and sell them something else.

Clearly they wanted to lure people in to sell them Pepsi cans...

There are other reasons for deciding not to sell a house after advertising it other than pulling a bait-and-switch scam. Maybe the seller changed their mind about selling it, or realized the house is worth more than they advertised it for. The mere fact that someone placed an ad for their house doesn't legally obligate them to sell it. I'm not a lawyer so don't know what exactly would legally be considered a bait-and-switch, but I presume you'd have to show that the plan all along was to use the initial offer as bait in order to draw a buyer into some other deal.

While you're absolutely right, I don't see how its relevant in this case.

>you'd have to show that the plan all along was to use the initial offer as bait in order to draw a buyer into some other deal.

I mean, its pretty obvious that their plan is to use the excitement of the harrier jet to lure people into buying pepsi and pepsi points. The question really becomes: might a reasonable person believe that they're actually selling the jet. I would say its quite likely. I think this is bad precendent.