vwayne1
Hero Member
. You say the seller would be legally obligated. This means to me that there has to be an actual written law Can you please reference the actual law. Thanks.Business Law 101: An offer to sell an item can be withdrawn by the seller at anytime prior to the acceptance of the seller's terms by a buyer. At the point of acceptance by a buyer, the seller is then obligated to complete the transaction, and the buyer is obligated to render payment. If the buyer makes a counter-offer, then the seller has the right to accept the buyer's offer, reject the offer, or make a counter-offer, themselves. At that point (since the buyer's counter-offer has effectively rejected the terms of the original offer to sell), the seller no longer has a duty to fulfill the terms of the original sales offer. The facts of the OP's situation aren't completely clear, but: If the seller displayed a table of jewelry marked for sale at $1.00 each, and the OP told the seller that he would take them all for the stated price, then the seller had the legal obligation to complete the transaction. If the seller pulled the jewelry back (effectively rescinding the offer to sell) prior to the buyer accepting the seller's offer, then the seller has no obligation to complete the transaction. If the buyer counter-offered to buy all of the jewelry at $0.50 per item, then the seller no longer had a duty to sell the items to the buyer, even at the $1.00 per item price (since the counter-offer effectively rejected the original offer to sell). Obviously, a garage sale transaction is not headed for a court of law, but I believe that the legal standard is also the ethical thing to do here.