eBay -- A sale's a sale?

[denquixote]

@denquixote

While the legal principle that the judge applied is well established, there is another legal principle at work in the situation you describe and that is a buyer has no right to snap up a clearly mistaken or erroneous offer. Even if the buyer is serious about the offer because he mistook “a Hopi diamond” for the Hope diamond there is “no meeting of the minds” on the offer and thus it is invalid. The joke offer is similarly invalid.

In the OP’s case suppose the original offerer had access to a second identical plane which he was willing to sell exactly as stated, would he not want the sale to be upheld if the buyer wanted to back out? In any case even the successful bidder may not know the precise level of rarity of the plane he bid on. You certainly cannot impute your own knowledge about an item to an unidentified potential cutomer.

Missed the “edit” cutoff - This is not to say that a “joke” offer of $225,000 (what the plane might be worth) would be unenforceable since it might be very difficult to demonstrate that this offer was in jest and it also may cause harm to the seller by keeping him from selling it to another buyer. In such a case the “you can’t get blood from a stone” rule would probably apply.