Tenax Steamship Co v Owners of the Motor Vessel Brimnes [1974] EWCA Civ 15 is an English contract law case on agreement.
[1] The question remains, however, as to whether that was sufficient to constitute communication of the withdrawal notice to the charterers, a point which Mr. Anthony Evans accepts it is for him to establish.
He submits that, by leaving the Telex machine working, the charterers in effect represented that any message so transmitted to them during ordinary business hours would (as Mrs. Sayce herself conceded) be dealt with promptly.
But if there should be a case where the offeror without any fault on his part does not receive the message of acceptance - yet the sender of it reasonably believes it has got home when it has not - then I think there is no contract."
I propose to say no more than that I respectfully agree with that conclusion, particularly as the case for the charterers throughout was that Mrs. Sayce, the member of their staff specially charged with attending to Telex messages, did not leave the office until after 18.30 hours and they advanced no reason why a Telex message received on their machine at 17.45 hours should not have been noted by her before she left the office, as she insisted, not less than 45 minutes later.