Federal Court - Christian Aboriginal Infrastructure Developments ...

Page: 291
decision in Daulia Ltd. v. Four Millbank Nominees Ltd., [1978] 2 All E.R. 557 (C.A.), at 560 to 561
as follows:
The concept of a unilateral or ‘if’ contract is somewhat anomalous,
because it is clear that, at all events until the offeree starts to perform
the condition, there is no contract at all, but merely an offer which
the offeror is free to revoke. Doubts have been expressed whether the
offeror becomes bound so soon as the offeree starts to perform or
satisfy the condition, or only when he has fully done so. In my
judgment, however, we are not concerned in this case with any such
problem, because in my view the plaintiffs had fully performed or
satisfied the condition when they presented themselves at the time
and place appointed with a banker’s draft for the deposit and their
part of the written contract for sale duly engrossed and signed, and
the retendered the same, which I understood to mean proferred it for
exchange. Actual exchange, which never took place, would not in
my view have been part of the satisfaction of the condition but
something additional which was inherently necessary to be done by
the plaintiffs to enable, not to bind, the defendants to perform the
unilateral contract.
2010 FC 495 (CanLII)
Accordingly in my judgment, the answer to the first question must be
in the affirmative.
Even if my reasoning so far be wrong the conclusion in my view is
still the same for the following reasons. Whilst I think the true view
of a unilateral contract must in general be that the offeror is entitled
to require full performance of the condition which he has imposed
and short of that he is not bound, that must be subject to one
important qualification, which stems from the fact that there must be
an implied obligation on the part of the offeror not to prevent the
condition becoming satisfied, which obligation it seems to me must
arise as soon as the offeree starts to perform. Until then the offeror
can revoke the whole thing, but once the offeree has embarked on
performance it is too late for the offeror to revoke his offer.
[1107] The benefits of the mill were not meant to be one-sided. Employment would be provided as
local woodsmen would have the opportunity to engage in the timber industry in accordance with the
regulations that required 60 percent of all timber cut in Yukon to be processed there, before one log