Case Summary - Gibson v Manchester City Council [1979]
Facts of the case A letter was sent by the defendant to the plaintiff with words such as ‘the corporation may be prepared to sell the house…. If you would like to make a formal application to buy your council house, please complete the enclosed application form and return to me as soon as possible’ The plaintiff returned the form and seeking a lower price. However, the defendant refused to do so. The plaintiff asked for the application to proceed as per his application. Due to the change of control of the defendant council from the Conservatives to the Labour Party, the sale of the house to the plaintiff was refused. Held In Court of Appeal, Lord Denning MR stated that there was an agreement for the sale of the house between the parties after looking at the correspondence as a whole. Lord Diplock in House of Lord however stated that ‘I can see no reason in the instant case for departing from the conventional approach of looking at the…documents…and seeing whether on their true construction there is to be found in them a contractual offer by the council to sell the house to Mr. Gibson and acceptance of the offer by Mr. Gibson’ Based on the conventional approach it was found by the House of Lords that the defendant council had not made a contractual offer to the plaintiff.
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