The decisive question in this case is: did the party whose actual intention did not conform to the common intention expressed, lead the other party, as a reasonable man, to believe that his declared intention represented his actual intention?
To answer this question, a three-fold enquiry is usually necessary, namely, first, was there a misrepresentation as to one party's intention; secondly, who made that representation, and thirdly, was the other party misled thereby? The last question postulates two possibilities: was he actually misled and would a reasonable man have been misled?
In the present case the appellant represented to the respondent that its intention was to reduce the period of the lease. One has then to determine whether the misrepresentation had any effect, i e whether the respondent was misled thereby. If he realised (or should have realised as a reasonable man) that there was a real possibility of a mistake in the offer, he would have had a duty to speak and to enquire whether the expressed offer was the intended offer. Only thereafter could he accept. The snapping up of a bargain in the knowledge of such a possibility of a mistake in the offer would not be bona fide.
Whether there is a duty to speak will obviously depend on the facts of each case.
Source: SAFLII
Monday, March 30, 1992
Friday, March 20, 1992
A Mandate For Change
Despite the overwhelming mandate that whites gave President F. W. de Klerk to end their monopoly on political power, South Africa has a distance to travel before blacks inherit the vote and other basic rights flowing from it.
The ringing approval of 68.7 percent of the whites who voted in Tuesday's referendum left little doubt that Mr. de Klerk has their support to negotiate power sharing with blacks.
"The referendum result is close to being unique in the annals of politics," Hermann Giliomee, a political scientist at the University of Cape Town, wrote in The Cape Times newspaper today. "Here the South African whites, who have become a byword in the world for myopic bigotry, endorse a process which is most likely to reduce their political representation in a year or two to a minority in an elected legislature."
"To make it even more exceptional," Professor Giliomee said, "whites have done this from a position of relative strength and in the absence of any sense of imminent defeat."
Source: New York Times
The ringing approval of 68.7 percent of the whites who voted in Tuesday's referendum left little doubt that Mr. de Klerk has their support to negotiate power sharing with blacks.
"The referendum result is close to being unique in the annals of politics," Hermann Giliomee, a political scientist at the University of Cape Town, wrote in The Cape Times newspaper today. "Here the South African whites, who have become a byword in the world for myopic bigotry, endorse a process which is most likely to reduce their political representation in a year or two to a minority in an elected legislature."
"To make it even more exceptional," Professor Giliomee said, "whites have done this from a position of relative strength and in the absence of any sense of imminent defeat."
Source: New York Times
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