Pujols offer. Revocation

Since we have been discussing offers in the previous section I wanted to find a real life example. I found a good example in the Miami Marlins offering Albert Pujols a ten-year and what sources say a contract worth two hundred million dollars. The contract would be a bilateral contract with the Marlins promising to pay and Pujols promising to play. The contract would be govern under the common law because playing baseball would be considered a service. The offer though today was revoked by the Marlins. Before the offer was revoked Pujols and his agent had a few options. They could accept the offer at the terms the Marlins had provided following the mirror image rule. They could have made a counteroffear, which would terminate the original offer. They could have also rejected the offer also terminating the original offer. Let’s say Pujols accepted the offer and mailed a letter of acceptance to the Marlins. Once he places the letter into the mailbox the acceptance is considered valid. Let’s say Pujols accepted through email. Once the email enters the information processing system designated by the Marlins the acceptance is considered valid. Pujols and his agent could have exercised any of these options.

Pujols though never exercised any of these options because the Marlins revoked the offer. The Marlins exercised their right to revocation. What this means is because they are a “master of their offer” they have the right to revoke their offer at any time as long as Pujols did not enter into an option contract with the Marlins. In this instance Pujols had not entered into an option contract with the Marlins. There are other ways that an offer can be terminated. Let’s look at some hypothetical situations that could have happened in this scenario. As I mentioned before rejection or counteroffer would terminate the original offer. The counteroffer though would allow for continuing negotiations between the two parties. Another way this offer could have been terminated would be if the Marlins organization no longer existed, let’s say Major League Baseball disbanded the Marlins. This would be the same as if the offeror died; the offer would be immediately terminated. A fourth way the offer could be terminated would be if the offer were illegal. Let’s say the government banned playing Major League Baseball because of rampant steroid and HGH use. The offer would terminate because playing Major League Baseball is illegal. Finally the offer could terminate if Pujols didn’t respond within month and a month was a reasonable amount of time to decide on the offer. The offer would terminate because a reasonable amount of time has passed without a response. There are a variety of ways to terminate an offer the Marlins chose revocation in this instance. If you’re curious they revoked their offer to get Mark Buehrle.