Prakshat Thakkar, Jindal Global Law School
Modern day contracts have reached a stage wherein a simple conversation or a single document does not
usually form a final contract between parties. The complexity of transactions/deals entered into and the awareness of parties of complications that may arise in the future has led to there being a long negotiation process for the formation of a final contract even after an initial agreement was reached. This is because there is a difference for a businessman in clinching a deal and settling on the terms of that deal.1 However, from the legal perspective this raises great problems as most statutes talk about finality of contracts in a single stage and fail to recognise that most contracts take several days to negotiate. Even in this negotiation stage, all the negotiating parties look after their personal interests, often leading to several disagreements as to what the terms of the contract should be. This leads to several amendments being made to a term sheet or just several forms being sent to and from one party to another. An exchange of several forms makes it extremely difficult to tell when an offer was made and when the same was accepted which eventually leads to two major questions in law, a) whether a contract was actually formed and if there is a contact in place then b) what are the terms of the contract? These questions summarise the issue under discussion in this paper i.e. ‘battle of the forms’. Multiple jurisdictions have come up with methods to combat this problem and answer the above questions which are imperative for the purposes of contract law all over the world. Therefore, in this paper we shall look at the different methods used to combat this issue in different countries and determine if the same are viable solutions.
