CASE BRIEFS
TENDERS: OFFERS & INVITATIONS TO TREAT
R. v. Ron Engineering & Construction (Eastern) Ltd.
Supreme Court of Canada (1981)
Facts:
 Ron made a mistake in calculating its tender, submitted it, and then discovered the
error (which was not an obvious or apparent error). After the opening of tenders,
Ron advised Her Majesty that it had made a mistake and asked to withdraw it.
 Her Majesty sent Ron a contract, which Ron refused to sign. Her Majesty wants to
keep the tender deposit and give the contract to the next highest bidder.
Decision (Estey):
 This is a Unilateral Contract: the call for tenders is an offer that doesn’t create an
obligation, but when someone bids, the offer is accepted and does create
obligations. The deposit serves to enforce these obligations.
o This means that according to the call for tender documents, the rights of
the parties crystallize upon submission of the tender – CONTRACT A.
 The “Information for Tenderers” document made the deposit non-refundable if
the tender is withdrawn within 60 days after the opening of the tenders.
 Law of Mistake: only applies here to Contract A, since the second Contract (B)
was never accepted by the tenderer - distinguish between a tender incapable of
acceptance (no Contract A ever formed) and a bad calculation (as the Court of
Appeal did);
Previous Case Law:
 Belle River Community Arena: owner can’t accept a tender if they are told
(before they accept) of a mistake in a fundamental term of the tender – however,
the court is guided more by the contract between the parties in this case.
o However, the submission of the tender in the proper form (regardless of
mistakes in calculations) is the acceptance that forms Contract A. This
case would come into play before the tenders were submitted, or opened.
 McMaster University v. Wilchar: obvious error revealed on the face of the tender
– here, the error wasn’t known at the time of the bid; in McMaster the tender was
“snapped up”, but it didn’t qualify as a valid tender anyway (missing pages).