Accept vs Agree In a contract, is there a difference between "accepting the terms and conditions" versus "agreeing to the terms and conditions"?
Agree and accept are equivalent terms in this context.
What does the contract say? I write that so often I should get a stamp made. If the contract is silent, then it is implied that payment in US currency is acceptable, as is any other method of payment the parties agree to. As you have correctly quoted, there is no limit to the number of US coins that are valid for payments, unlike in many other jurisdictions where there is such a limit. Accept the coins, make the tenant wait while you count them one by one and then give them a receipt. Oh, and change your lease when you can to nominate sensible forms of payment like electronic transfer.
You can obviously write anything into a contract that you like. However, the laws of your country always apply, and the laws can tell you that some things are not valid, even if they are in a contract. Such things cannot be enforced. Things in a contract that are valid according to the laws can be enforced. An extrem example would be a contract saying &quot;user6726 pays gnasher $20,000, and gnasher kills user6726's spouse&quot;. Since killing your spouse is a very serious crime, even if we both signed it, and even if you paid the $20,000, you couldn't enforce me doing my side of the contract. What does it mean if we say a contract can be enforced? It means if we both sign a contract, and you do your side of the bargain, and I don't do mine, then you can take me to court. If the court agrees, the court can order me to do what the contract says, and/or to pay you damages. If I refuse, the court has ways to &quot;convince&quot; me to do my side of the bargain. For example, they could send bailiffs to my home, who take my property and sell it in an auction to pay for what I should have paid. They can not in most countries send me to jail. Sometimes one side cannot fulfil their side of the contract. If there is a contract that you build a brand new home for me, and I pay you a million dollar, but I not only don't have the money but am hugely in debt, then I can't pay you. Some people will say that you can't enforce your contract which is legally imprecise. You can take me to court etc., but you can't take money from my empty pockets. I might be in trouble though if I signed the contract knowing that I can't pay you; that could be criminal fraud and I might go to jail if a judge and jury believe that I committed fraud.
The formation of a contract occurs at the point where an offer is made and accepted by a person to whom it was made. The acceptance must be in reliance of the offer - if you don’t know the offer has been made you cannot accept it because you lack the intent to create a legal obligation. The reward for the lost dog is the textbook example. A real example is R v Clarke (1927) 40 CLR 227 in the High Court of Australia.
In such a case the person who bypasses the terms knows that use of the site is conditioned on agreement to the terms, and has taken an explicit action to continue past the terms and use the site. I suspect that if a dispute were to arise where this is relevant, it would be held that taking such action was legally equivalent to clicking "I agree". But I don't know of any court case on this point, and i can't be sure what a court would do. If having intentionally bypassed the terms, such a person tried to raise his or her lack of consent to the terms as a defense to some obligation imposed by those terms, such equitable concepts as "unclean hands" and estoppel might be raised, since such a person, in effect, leads the other party, the site owner, to believe that s/he has accepted the terms, I suspect that such a person will be treated as having accepted them. If this becomes at all common, I suppose that the designers of such sites will in future store a record of such consent being given, and not allow the user to proceed unless it has been.
If a contract always uses the wrong name, is it still valid? A contract is not a piece of paper. It is an agreement between parties that meets certain criteria. The piece of paper is just evidence of that agreement that can be referred to should there be any misunderstandings or disputes. So in your case, you would be presumed to have discussed the terms with the party you sign the NDA. You would be presumed to have fully understood them. A wrong name on the paper is just an error. It may make it more difficult to establish that you indeed entered the contract (in case of a dispute) but it will by no means invalidate the contract.
Does an agreement in a chat count as a valid contract? In most jurisdictions (and for most transactions): yes. Usually the only thing that matters for a valid contract is that there is a mutual agreement &ndash; whether that is in writing, orally, via chat or via sign language does not matter. Of course, having things in writing makes it easier to prove in court if there is a problem, so it's still advisable. What steps could I take if they don't send the money? You can: remind them to pay if they still don't pay, you can sue them. Some juridictions have accelerated court proceedings for simple cases like this (e.g. Gerichtliches Mahnverfahren in Germany), otherwise you will have to sue in a regular court that deals with contract disputes. But I have no names and I am unsure what they can or have to do after they received the package. This is going to be the main problem. It's no good to enter into a contract if you do not know who the other party is :-). You definitely need to find out who exactly entered into an agreement with you. If the sale is to a private person, find out their name and address. If the sale is to a business (seems to be the case here), find the official name and legal type of the business, and make sure whoever you deal with is authorized to enter into contracts. Otherwise the contract will be hard to enforce in court if things go wrong.
The site that you provide is explaining basics of contract law, and that quote attempts to explicate (and they refer to) the Latin maxim consensus ad idem, generally explained in modern language as &quot;meeting of the minds&quot;. Here is a brief overview of that legal concept. The basis idea is that the parties are talking about the same thing. An example of a lack of meeting of the minds is here, where a complainant agreed to withdraw a complaint in exchange for a service pin plus &quot;any/all straight time compensation&quot; lost. It was later established that the complainant believed that this included time off from work on sick leave, but the agency held that this had already been compensated – thus the parties did not agree to what was &quot;compensation lost&quot;. The &quot;agreement&quot; was thus found to be void, because the parties did not in fact agree on the meaning of the terms. Your purported example would not indicate a lack of meeting of the minds, though it might indicate fraud. A lack of meeting of the minds could arise if the seller intended objects A, C to be items on offer but the buyer believed objects A, B, D to be the offer. It should be noted that the law does not let a person get out of a contract simply by declaring &quot;I thought that...&quot;, the courts will look at the objective evidence as to what the parties did believe.