Acceptance, There Must Be Consideration, the Terms

¶ … acceptance, there must be consideration, the terms of the contract must be legal and there must be an intent to create legal relations (Riley, 2012). There must also be mutual consent and understanding of the meaning of the terms. For a contract to be enforceable, there must be performance or delivery, and good faith (Larson, 2010).

In this situation with Mary Smith, there is consideration (the food), and the consideration is legal. While there are two counterparties, there is not necessarily mutual consent here. Gourmet Heaven intended to create legal relations with Mattie Smith, not Mary Smith. Mary Smith did not know where the package was from and in any case did not seem to intend to create legal relations with anybody. So while Gourmet Heaven acted in good faith and made delivery, that was with Mattie Smith, not Mary. There is no enforceable contract between Gourmet Heaven and Mary Smith.

Delivery of the goods is the seller's responsibility, and this is covered in the Sale of Goods Act. The buyer has to accept the goods where a contract exists and the seller has acted in good faith. The problem here is that it was not the delivery service that erred, but the doorman, who is an agent of the buyer. In this case, there is a legal mistake in the delivery of the contract.

Where there is recourse it is through the delivery company, not through Mary Smith. The delivery company has contractually agreed to take responsibility for that package, and has not left it with the intended recipient. Thus, Gourmet Heaven does have some recourse, through the delivery company. The best legal argument for recovering from Mary Smith is that Mary committed a tort against the company. She knew that she had no legal right to the food, but took it anyway. This constitutes theft, and this tort provides an avenue for recourse against Mary Smith. There is at least negligence on Mary's fault. Clearly, the burden of exercising more care is not as great as the burden of committing the damage, as Mary would simply have needed to let the doorman know that this was not her package. She would be found to have committed this tort against Gourmet Heaven. In all likelihood, just the threat of legal action should allow for the recovery of the cost of the order from Mary Smith.

2. The unfair trade practice alleged here is dumping. First, we will assume that the ¥528 price is wholesale, so that we are in fact comparing apples to apples. If that is the case, the price these are being sold in China is twice the price as the price these are being sold in the United States.

Dumping is defined by the World Trade Organization as "when a company exports a product at a price lower than the price it normally charges on its own home market" (WTO.org, 2013). The price that is to be charged in the export market is the normal value.

The calculation of normal value is, of course, not as simple as just looking at a price from the home country. There are a number of issues that are taken into consideration. In this case, we do not know where the tires are manufactured. China has some free trade zones where exports are duty free. Goods produced in these zones are often more expensive in China (outside of the zones) than they are in foreign markets because they are subject to additional duties to enter China. It is possible that this is the case here.