Discuss the following:
Joseph is a self employed builder and he received in January 2014 a telephone call fromAndy, who, as an employee, represents Adcom Pty Ltd, a marketing/advertisingcompany. During this call, Andy told Joseph that Adcom Pty Ltd was currently runninga campaign to sell "advertising space" to local businesses on supermarket shop-a-dockets.These are the dockets received from a supermarket by a customer with printed details onthe reverse about special offers from local businesses.Andy told Joseph that the advertising campaign would go for 12 weeks and would start inFebruary 2014 and that for Joseph's local supermarket, the WGA at the Northlandshopping centre, there is an estimated 8,000 dockets produced per day and that this offeris an "offer almost too good to be true" as all it would cost Joseph is $2,000 to participatein this campaign.All Joseph had to do is to give an okay and then Andy would fax some paperwork forJoseph to sign which he would then need to fax back to Andy. He also advises Josephthat he is recording the telephone conversation and whether or not Joseph objected tothis. Joseph replied saying that "he had no problem with the conversation beingrecorded".Joseph hesitated about agreeing to the deal as he was having difficulty with his cash flowat the time and he was also sceptical that this sort of advertising would help his sort ofbusiness. Andy then explained that if Joseph did not accept this deal at this time then itwould not be offered again as it was a "once only deal" and if Joseph turned it down thenit would likely go to another business. To encourage Joseph, Andy explains that he willlower the offer price to $1,800 but this is a one-off special deal not available to anyoneelse.The $200 discount is just what Joseph wanted to hear and is enough to cause him to sayto Andy, "Okay, I will go ahead with it". Andy is thrilled to hear this and he says that hewill send the fax to Joseph in the next 15 minutes and that he will call Joseph shortly afterthat time to run through the fine detail of the agreement.The fax is duly sent to Joseph and Joseph then reads the fine print which states that theadvertising campaign is for 8 weeks only and that the total price payable is $2,200inclusive of $200 GST (Goods and Services Tax).Joseph is quite upset to read about these differences and when Andy calls him back hepoints out these differences in the paper based agreement to what he thought were theterms of the agreement discussed over the telephone. Andy then says he wanted to offera discount but his management would not let him and he also made a mistake about theterm of the advertising campaign. Joseph said based on the written document beingdifferent to the telephone agreement that he would not now proceed with the advertisingcampaign. Andy then said "you do realise our earlier conversation was recorded and thatyou have given your consent and so that means you are bound to our agreement". Joseph then replies by saying "the consent I gave was to what we agreed in our telephoneconversation and so I am not bound to your written document". Andy then tells him,"Well in that case we will see you in court".Joseph does not pay the $2,200 and does nothing more about this matter until late May2014 (after the advertising campaign finished, which incidentally did not bring in onenew customer to his business) and so he then comes to you for advice in this matter as heis most upset about having to pay for advertising that he did not authorise and which hassince proved worthless.
(i) Focussing only on the contract law issues raised by these facts please adviseJoseph and Adcom Pty Ltd as to what legal rights follow from the abovementioned facts.
(ii) Again focussing only on the contract law issues would your advice differ ifJoseph only begins his action in July 2014 after having signed the written document(without complaint) in January 2014 and after the marketing campaign wascompleted in April 2014 and that the advertising agreement included the followingclause (clause 10)?Clause 10: This document contains all the terms of this advertising agreementand any other representations made by either party either before or after thisdocument was signed by both parties and that does not form part of this finalagreement are not binding on either party