Cobauch v. Klick-Lewis, Inc.
385 Pa.Super. 587, 561 A.2d 1248 (Pa. Super 1989)
Cobaugh
was playing in a golf tournament.When he got to the 9th hole, there was a car and a sign
claiming that the first person to get a hole-in-one wins the car (provided by Klick-Lewis).Cobaugh got a hole-in-one and
tried to collect his car.Klick-Lewis refused to give him the car.Cobaugh sued for specific performance.
Turns
out, Klick-Lewis had offered the car for a different charity tournament a
few days before, but hadn't bothered to take the sign down before Cobaugh
played.
Klick-Lewis
also tried arguing that the proposal was nothing more than a gift with no
consideration, and was therefore
unenforceable.
Trial
Court found for Cobaugh.Klick-Lewis appealed.
The
Trial Court found that this was a unilateral contract, that Cobaugh accepted via performance.
Appellate
Court affirmed.
The Appellate Court
found that it is the manifested intent of the offeror and not his subjective intent, which determines if persons have the power to
accept the offer (see 2nd Restatement of Contracts §29).
In
this case, the manifested intent
was that the hole-in-one challenge was still a valid offer.
The
Court found that the hole-in-one was consideration.Plus, Klick-Lewis benefited via the publicity they got during the
charity tournament.
Klick-Lewis
could have avoided this by taking their sign down, but that was their
mistake and did not constitute a mistake on the part of Cobaugh.Making a mistake does not permit
one to avoid a contract obligation.
Klick-Lewis
might have been able to argue that the contract was illegal because it
was "gambling," but they didn't argue that.
A
dissent, it was argued that since making a hole-in-one is
luck, not skill, the contract should be considered gambling and is
therefore illegal and unenforceable.
Once
you've made an offer, there has to be a way to revoke it.Here it would have been easy for
Klick-Lewis to take down the sign, but what if there was an ad in the
newspaper?The courts have
said that you can revoke an offer for a reward the same way you make
it.So if you run an ad in
the newspaper, you can revoke it by running an ad in the newspaper.
This
principle was used in 1865 after Lincoln was killed, in the case of Shoey
v. United States.The Secretary of State put an ad
in the paper for a $25k reward for the capture of one of Booth's
accomplices, John Serrat.Months later, they revoked the offer via an ad in the same
newspaper.Some guy named
St. Marie who read the ad moved to Rome and found Serrat, who was working
for the Papal Guard!He
never saw the revocation.The US Supreme Court found that the offer was properly revoked, so
St. Marie does not get the $25k.
