Legal Issues in E-Healthcare Systems - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 33

In Re Argos , case (unreported), Argos is a giant
chain retailer. It mistakenly advertised on its web
site the price of 21-inch televisions as £ 3 instead
of £ 3,299. Almost one million orders were made
before the mistake was noticed. One buyer alone
placed an order for 1,700 television sets. Argos
then argued that the advertisement was simply
an invitation to treat or a mistake and therefore,
refused to honour the purchase order. Eventually,
the case was settled out of court (Sherriff, 1999).
In another incident the WStore offered 99%
discount on Kinda PCs. They advertised PC for
just £ 12. The normal price of the PC was 1,200.
Before the company rectified the mistake 2
customers placed their order. But the company
insisted that they were not bound by the contract
even if an automatic message of acceptance had
been sent out to the customers. The company
further argued that the parties are bound by the
terms and conditions. One of the terms said that
the company reserves the right to remedy any
obvious mistakes in the listed prices by charging a
proper commercial value price to rectify the error
(Richardson, 2000). In this case the company did
not argue that the webvertishment is an invitation
to treat but had accepted that it was an offer but the
parties were bound by the terms and conditions.
The above cases show that the more specific
the offer, however, the more likely the courts
may interpret an advertisement as an offer. To
avoid this many online companies offering health
products or services make it clear that the web
site advertisement is not meant to be an offer.
In this regard the European Union Directive on
E-Commerce (Directive 2000/31/EC) will be of
great assistance. The Directive in article 11 states
that a service provider's offer that a consumer is
accepting is a real offer and not an invitation to
treat from the provider to make offers, and a real
acceptance, and not an offer from the consumer.
Cavanillas (2001) explained that the reason for
this provision is to avoid giving the supplier or
merchant a freehand to conclude the contract or
not. On the Internet, the offeror can revoke an of-

fer using e-mail, but whether it can be revoked by
placing a notice on a web site is doubtful. Since
the revocation notice needs to be actually received
by the offeree, a web display will probably not
suffice. The offeror's freedom in revoking an
offer depends on how quickly the revocation is
produced and the convenient means of producing
evidence on the receipt of the revocation. It means
until revocation of an offer is communicated to
the consumers, the offer is to be taken as effective
and it can be argued that placing of web notice
on revocation is not valid.
Another issue in any type of e-contract is adding
new terms. If the offeree adds additional terms in
the acceptance or requests a change in the offer, the
offeree has made a counter offer and becomes the
offeror (Hyde v. Wrench, 1840). The same offline
rule is applicable when contracting online too.
The question would be can an offeror introduce
new terms to an offer after the original offer had
been accepted? In Caspi v. Microsoft Network,
L.L.C ., the U.S. court accepted the validity of an
additional clause after conclusion of a contract.
Applying the above decision to an e-contract
problem if the e-retailer introduced new terms
when he delivered the goods with an option of
cancellation of contract, the acceptor can accept
the new terms or reject it by returning the goods
within the specified period. If he fails to comply
with, the court may hold that a valid contract was
formed on the seller's terms, even if there is no
statutory provision to this effect.
The next question to be addressed is when
the contract is formed? As per Article 15 of the
UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce,
an offer and acceptance will be effective at the
moment the message enters an information system
outside the control of the originator. Accordingly,
the message is to be effective against the other
party when the message was received and entered
into the addressee's information system. The ac-
ceptance will be effective once the acceptance has
entered into the offeror's information system. An
acceptance is effective only when it comes to the