Department Of Commercial & Industrial Law

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Browsing Department Of Commercial & Industrial Law by Subject "CASE COMMENTS"

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    CASE COMMENTS
    (The Department of Private & Property Law, Faculty of Law, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos Nigeria., 2004) SANNI, A.O
    Although the traditional examples of unilateral contracts are of trivial domestic nature, the concept plays a large and useful part in commercial transactions. Once a promise is classified as an offer of a unilateral contract, a number of rules apply to the acceptance of the offer. However, since the classical case of Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co., (Carlill’scase) in 1893, there has not been any reported case on unilateral contract in Nigeria. Remarkably, the Supreme Court recently applied the concept in the case of Federal Government of Nigeria & Ors. Zebra Energy Limited. The thrust of this paper is to evaluate the case and its contributions, if any, to Nigerian jurisprudence on the Law of Contract, especially, the concept of unilateral contract. This paper is divided into five parts. Part One examines the meaning and features of a unilateral contract while Part Two focuses on the facts of the Zebra's case and the decision. Part Three is devoted to the Comments of the writer on the case while Part Four postulates on the correct analysis of the case based on established principles of the Law of Contract. The paper is concluded in Part Five. It is the view of this writer that the case was wrongly decided and therefore merely raises a false signal about the emergence of the first Nigerian case on unilateral contract. Rather, the case raises an issue on revocation of an offer made open till a specific date before the expiration of the date and not that of a unilateral contract.