Acceptance
An unqualified assent to the terms of an offer, in the manner the offer invites, creating a binding contract.
The classic MBE fact pattern is a timing race: the offeree mails an acceptance, then something crosses it in the mail. Your answer hinges on remembering that the mailbox rule does not apply to option contracts (Restatement § 63(b)) — there acceptance is effective only on receipt. Watch the overtaking scenarios: if the offeree dispatches a rejection first and then an acceptance, the mailbox rule is suspended, and whichever the offeror receives first controls. (If acceptance is sent first, a later-arriving rejection still loses unless the offeror receives it first and detrimentally relies, estopping the offeree.) Because the offeror is master of the offer, an offer making a specific method the exclusive way to accept renders any other method ineffective.
Don’t confuse acceptance with mutuality: beginning performance on a unilateral offer (Restatement § 45) creates an option making the offer temporarily irrevocable, but is not yet acceptance — only completed performance accepts.
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