#24 - A contract between two parties is valid only if one

[Claire Horan]

Hi Freddy,

Remember to check the contrapositives as well when trying to see how two conditionals relate to each other.

valid one party accepted a legitimate offer

The contrapositive is:

one party accepted a legitimate offer valid

This is like the scenario in E. You don't always need to be able to neatly combine your conditionals into one to get the correct answer.

The reason (B) doesn't work is that it incorrectly equates "someone in the position of the party to whom it was made would reasonably believe the offer to be made in jest" with the offeror, unknown to the offeree, making the offer in jest. For that reason, it can be eliminated even without manipulating the conditionals.

[PatMcGroin]

Little confused as to the wording in the stimulus. Should we be paying attention to the difference between "accepts a legitimate offer" and "legitimate offer"?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Pat,

In both cases, they are using the term "legitimate offer" which can link up the conditional statements.

valid contract accepted legitimate offer

reasonable person believe offer in jest not legitimate offer

We can take the contrapositive of the second statement to get

legitimate offer reasonable person believe offer in jest

Now, we can link up the two conditionals using the "legitimate offer" language. An accepted legitimate offer is still a legitimate offer, so it's fine to link it up.

valid contract accepted legitimate offer reasonable person believe offer in jest

Hope that helps!

[jakobkerns]

I'm confused as to how E is a correct response.

The text for E states:
"The only offer that Sal made to Veronica was not a legitimate one. Thus, regardless of whether Sal made the offer in jest, there is no valid contract between them."

But this answer misses the possibility that Veronica made a legitimate offer to Sal which Sal accepted. How can we conclude that there is no valid contract between them without knowing that information?

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Jakobkerns,

I'm going to repost your question to make it easier for me to address and less confusing for other students to read:

"The only offer that Sal made to Veronica was not a legitimate one. Thus, regardless of whether Sal made the offer in jest, there is no valid contract between them."

But this answer misses the possibility that Veronica made a legitimate offer to Sal which Sal accepted. How can we conclude that there is no valid contract between them without knowing that information"
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Each of the five answer choices only has one offer. We can assume that Sal is the only one making the offer here based on how the other answer choices are worded. You are delving too deep in the hypothetical by bringing up Veronica making an offer to Sal. The answer choice only discusses Sal making an offer to Veronica and we can reasonably assume this was the only offer made.

Secondly and significantly more importantly, there are no other answer choices that follow the conditional logic of the stimulus above. If you had two seemingly correct answer choices, your concern would maybe be more salient.

As a student in logical reasoning, you want to pick the best answer choice out of the 5. You do not want to try and make sure the correct answer choice is perfect beyond any doubt whatsoever. There will very rarely be perfect answer choices that account for every possibility and include every caveat (maybe one per section). This answer choice is so close to perfect that I would have almost wanted to just pick it without reading the other four answer choices if it were Answer choice A. I would not do that as I always read all five answer choices in LR but I would have wanted to.

So this answer choice is correct because the conditional logic in the stimulus goes as follows:

contract valid----->accept legit offer----->receiving party not reasonably believe the offer was made in jest

Answer choice E states that the only offer Sal made to veronica was not a legit offer. Therefore the contract is not valid. This follows the contrapositive of the above conditional logic.

To sum it all up. Don't look for the perfect answer choice. Look for the best answer choice. Trust your conditional logic and make sure your conditional logic skills are basically perfect so you barely have to think about the statements while you're mapping them out because you've memorized them so much.

I hope this all helps and I wish you all of the luck in your studies.

Best,
Ryan

[relona]

Hi all,

It sounds like you guys have got it! The information we're given essentially diagrams out as:

Reasonably believed to be in jest legitimate offer valid contract

and the contrapositive:

valid contract legitimate offer reasonably believed to be in jest

Answer choice (D) gives us

reasonably believed to be in jest valid contract

which is a mistaken negation of the conditional reasoning in the stimulus.

Answer choice (E) diagrams out as:

legitimate offer valid contract

and explicitly and correctly says that being in jest or not is irrelevant, following exactly the reasoning contained in the stimulus.

I diagrammed the first sentence as: Valid Contract -----> Accepts a Legitimate Offer
The second sentence I diagrammed as: Made in Jest ----> Not Legitimate (strikethrough)

Did I think about this correctly?

[Adam Tyson]

You did, but it's important to distinguish between the offer actually being made in jest, which is not relevant, and the offer being one that a person receiving the offer would reasonably believe it was made in jest, which is what really matters. It's that reasonable belief that controls, rather than whether the offeror was truly making a joke or not.

The LSAT likes to test those differences between belief and facts, between motives and actions, between intentions and outcomes, etc. Just because something is true doesn't mean I believe it, and vice versa. Having a motive to do a thing doesn't mean I will do it. Intending a certain outcome is not the same as accomplishing that outcome. Watch out for these distinctions, as they are the key to a lot of LR questions!

[asid178]

I don't understand how B is wrong. I diagrammed it as J →/V which matches up with my inference diagram of
J →/L→/V.

[katehos]

Hi asid178, thank you for your question!

Your diagram is the correct contrapositive of the conditional chain created by this question - great job! The issue with (B), however, is that it does not invoke that conditional chain.

Take a close look at the language used in the second part of the stimulus:

the party to whom the offer was made would reasonably believe the offer to be made in jest offer is not legitimate (:arrow: contract is not valid; this is the contrapositive of the first portion of the stimulus).

So, it's not just that the offer was made in jest (Gus did make the offer in jest), it's whether or not the party who received the offer (Kenta) believed the offer was made in jest. But we are specifically informed that Kenta did not know. Thus, we cannot invoke the conditional chain you presented - the sufficient condition was not met!

Every word matters on the LSAT, so make sure that your diagrams and answer choices accurately reflect the terms of the stimulus! As you can see, the distinction between whether or not the offer was actually made in jest and whether or not the receiver believed it to be made in jest makes a big difference here.

I hope this helps
Kate