Can you reverse that. A sale person ask a customer "are you interested in buying that car with the sticker price of $10,000", the customer says "yes", the sale person says "We have a deal". Is this a contract, meaning that the customer can no longer walk out of the store?

No, you’re playing with words here.

Replace your first sentence with “will you buy this car from me for $10000” and that seems like a pretty clear verbal contract.

Of course verbal contracts are tricky, but this particular case was in writing.

The words matter yes, as does the meaning behind them. If we return to the yard sale and have the seller say "I will buy that knickknack for $1, do you agree" and the seller says "Yes", then the verbal contract is much more obvious.

Just like a customer asking for a price check, a seller asking if a customer is interested are normal parts of conversations that occurs between buyers and seller before a sale is made final. Regardless if it is in writing or not, the important part is if there has been an general agreement between the two parties. That agreement is what forms a contract.

If I go to a store and point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", the clerk says "$1", I say "that's a deal", the clerk say "you got to be a member of the club, which cost $1000", then that is not a break of contract. Depending in the jurisdiction it could be an illegal contract or false advertisement, but those tend to take a perspective of protecting customers against being tricked. That is a harder case to make when its the seller that refuses to agree to the sale.

“How much is that?” is strictly different from “I will pay you $2500 for this”.

First isn’t an offer, nor is it a negotiation.

I don't think that's a contract you want to engage in. There are no terms for timing. A dollar today or in 10 years? It will be difficult to prove these details were known or that the offer took place at all, which is why you want things in writing - which is the case for wormhole.com. It's also interesting to note that a verbal contract is not sufficient to form a contract at price points over a few hundred dollars.

Take from this what you will.

I think you'd be surprised how liberally courts have discovered implied terms in contracts where the parties have omitted them. There's a whole body of law on it, and courts have demonstrated considerable unwillingness to void contracts for uncertainty.

Also: about a zillion successful purchases at yard sales indicate to me that this is a pretty good way to form contracts of sale.

> Also: about a zillion successful purchases at yard sales indicate to me that this is a pretty good way to form contracts of sale.

In yard sales (and most retail situations, too), contracts of sale are usually formed with the tender of payment buy the prospective buyer for a specific set of items at a price stated by the seller as the offer, and acceptance of the tendered payment as the acceptance; they sale contract is formed fully executed, not as an executory (with some obligations still unfulfilled) contract.

How many of those zillion contracts have been tested in a court of law? (As that is the relevant context here)

The original circumstances were, in fact, written, and the example quoted above was below such threshold. As such, I wouldn’t believe the note on verbal contracts is relevant to the matter at hand.

> If you're holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", and you say "it's a dollar" and I say "that's a deal", that's a contract.

If you move forward and actually execute on it, sure.

If you then immediately say "actually, no, I've changed my mind", without making any motions to give the item over, it's hard to imagine that'd be considered breach of contract.

What does "execute on it" mean from a legal perspective?

Actually physically exchange the knickknack for the dollar bills.

> A quote is not a necessary element to formation of a contract.

True, but manifest intent to form a binding contract on the part of both parties is.

> If you’re holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask “how much for that?”, and you say “it’s a dollar” and I say “that’s a deal”, that’s a contract.

Probably not; contract law would probably view that as a negotiation where only you manifested an intent to form a binding contract, so unless there was some positive acknowledgement of your “that’s a deal”, no contract would be formed.

I mean, I’m pretty sure that a near identical scenario to that was the one the of textbook demonstrations of the absence of that contract element in my Contracts class.

Are you suggesting that after that dialog, were I to put a dollar bill down on the table and wander away with the tchotchke, there would be courts that would hold I didn't actually buy it?

> Are you suggesting that after that dialog, were I to put a dollar bill down on the table and wander away with the tchotchke, there would be courts that would hold I didn’t actually buy it?

If the proprietor was aware of it and didn’t object, probably not, because the tender of payment is an offer on the negotiated terms and its acceptance is…acceptance.

I don't know - that seems a little bit wonky to me - you started off with the idea that there was no intent to create legal relations, but somehow that occurs as soon as the dollar bill appears, and then one party accepts by silence?

I would say it's pretty clear that buyer and seller in a yard sale are intending to create legal relations - viz. exchange goods for cash - this isn't one of those weird areas like family agreements or pacts between friends.

If, at the point the buyer put the dollar on the table, the seller suddenly changed their mind and said "no, it's not for sale actually", would a reasonable bystander actually think that the sale had been agreed? I would say yes.

BTW if you think this one is bad, check out the fun and games trying to rationalize offer and acceptance in the Amazon stores without checkouts: https://www.oscola.org/post/amazon-fresh-offer-and-acceptanc...

I'm confused - how is "it's a dollar" not a quote?

In context, it clearly means "I will sell this to you for a dollar". That's an offer.

A quote is just a price. Like if you send a meat wholesaler a telegram asking what the price of pork is, and they send back "this kind of pork is $xxx, that kind of pork is $yyy", then that's a quote; it's not an offer. You can't accept a quote in contract law.

The difference can be fairly fine. You can even explicitly say that what you're writing is a quote and still end up having a court interpret it as an offer.

Compare these two:

https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/collages/1810

https://cite.case.law/minn/21/155/

To put it another way, if an item has a price tag, is that a quote? Can I refuse to sell you something?

The GP’s line of reasoning leads to an implication that it could be a contract and therefor are unable to deny sale. Or reverse, a quote is a price tag not a contract.

I’d say no they’re able to deny service despite the price list.

A price tag is, conventionally, regarded as an "invitation to treat". It's not legally binding as an offer.

The legal fiction goes that you take your goods to the checkout, and the offer occurs when the checkout clerk says "that'll be $19.95", and the acceptance when you offer payment.

Alternatively, you could take the goods to the checkout and say "I know it says $19.95, but this is shopworn and I'll only pay $15 for it" - which is then the offer - and the acceptance occurs when the manager agrees to that price.

You're right that a quote is not necessary, but GP was describing what needs to happen for a quote to become a contract. The quote's existence is the premise.