127 A case which turns on whether an acceptance was unquahtied or altered was decided in 1905 (p. 143). It concerned terms of payment and the meaning of certain expressions. The Supreme Court ruled that the wording of the acceptance did not constitute an addition or alteration of terms of the offer. Thus the contract had been concluded. A problem of great practical importance is this: Parties who have come to an oral agreement on a contract which is not required to be drawn up m writing m order to be valid, take it for granted (or at least one of them does) that a contract is to be written afterwards. Is there a binding contract before the contract has been drafted anci signed? Ot course the circumstances vary. For the contract to be valid is required at least that the terms have been defined sufficiently and are provable. But apart from that: is the contract enforceable before it has been signed? In a case from 1893 (p. 275) the Supreme Court decided that an oral contract on letting an apartment was binding, although the parties had agreed on signing a formal contract. Two dissenting judges found that the parties had presupposed a written contract and that therefore the oral agreement was to be regarded only as a preliminary agreement on the principal points of the projected contract. This and another case from 1902 (p. 54) seem to suggest that the usage of having contracts of the kind in question in writing did not even imply a presumption that there was no contract before such a document hacf been signecf. Finally it is to be mentioned that in a series of cases in 1915 (p. 233) the Supreme Court acknowledged collective agreements to be legally binding. The cases emerged trom a great general strike in 1909 and some trade unions were sued b\’ the emplovers for damages. The unions argued that no legal relation existed betw'een the employers and the unions. The Supreme Court, however, deemed the collective agreement to be binding but did not award damages as the collective agreement did not prohibit sc nipathetic actions. No later cases on collective agreements were brought to the courts until a special Fabour Court was established m 1928 to adjudicate m disputes concernmg collective agreements. These cases concerning formation of contracts show the Supreme Court’s pragmatic approach, how after a somewhat slow beginning the Supreme Court accepted flexible forms of concluding contracts and adapted to new social conditions in other respects also. In the following chapter (3) I have particularly studied cases turning on the effect of passi\ it\' or silence, i.e. the legal significance in the law of contract of a party’s omitting to react, to declare expressly his intention. It fits in well with the idea that the meeting of the parties’ wills creates the contract, that silence on the side of one of the parties pre- \ents the creation of a contract; silence does not m general amount to an acceptance. In commercial relations, as a consequence of the need for speedv reactions, there wms however a growing tendencv not to tolerate inaction, and in time it became more common to attach legal significance to silence or inaction; this could lead to loss of rights, or also even to the creation of a contract, on account of a failure of one of the parties to comply with the demands for speeds reactions established b\ commercial usage. This development can be observed in the cases I have studied. In the beginning the Supreme Court was serv reluctant to admit an\’ effects of maction in so far as the conclusion of contracts is concerned. Not even in a case from 1882 (p. 318), where the owner of an estate, who had a distilling apparatus installed and had used it for a vear without complaints, refused to pav for it alleging that the apparatus was out of order and ctuild not be approved, did the Supreme Court confirmthe judgment of the district court, according to which the estate owner was lnuind bv the contract. But the Supreme Court awarded compensation on other grounds. A case from 1901 (p. 29), of a more commercial character, turned on the question whether the bu\ er of a quantit\- of ci>ffee was bound b\ the sales contract. After an oral
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