Washington and Lee Law Review Volume 14 | Issue 2 Article 4 Fall 9-1-1957 Case Comments Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr Recommended Citation Case Comments, 14 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 220 (1957), https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/ vol14/iss2/4 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington and Lee Law Review at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington and Lee Law Review by an authorized editor of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 220 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. XIV CASE COMMENTS CONTRACT s-AcCEPTANCE OF OFFER BY FAILURE TO NOTIFY OFFEROR OF REJECTION. [Federal] It is a popular maxim that silence implies assent, or as Oliver Goldsmith once stated, "silence gives consent."u Since the development of the contract as a legal instrument, there have been repeated attempts to gain contractual advantages by asserting as a comparable legal rule that failure to express a rejection of an offer may constitute an accept- 3 ance of it.2 The recent case of Russell v. The Texas Company stands as one of the relatively infrequent instances in which this contention has been upheld in the courts. Plaintiff was the owner of certain prop- erty (referred to as section 23) in which defendant owned the mineral rights and had the right to use such of the surface as might be necessary for the mining of minerals.