Topic: Business legal advice

Order Description
Write an advice letter for the following case:

Robert (in his 70s) is an owner of a flower supplier and sells & supplies flowers to Brian (also in his 70s) who is an owner of a flower retail shop. They have been doing business together via posting for over 10 years already. They could have communicated more efficiently via e-mails but they have stuck with traditional posting instead.

Each week the business flow is as follow:
Mon- Brian lodges his order of flowers via post to Robert
Tues- Robert receives the order and sends out a sales confirmation letter back to Brian
Wed- Brian receives the confirmation letter
Thurs- flowers are delivered to Brian’s shop

One Wednesday Brian didn’t receive any confirmation letter from Robert and assumed that he couldn’t fulfil his order. As Brian must deliver flowers to his client the next day he decided to order the same flowers but paid extra to another supplier due to the urgency. On the next day (Thurs) both flowers from Robert and the new supplier arrived at his shop at the same time and Brian refused to pay for Robert’s delivery.

Sadly, the truth is that there was actually a postal strike on Wednesday that week and they were both unaware of this! The fact that Robert did send out his confirmation letter but due to the postal strike his letter could only hit Brian on Thursday, same time the flowers arrived his shop.
a. Advise Robert‘s options of response to Brian using case law

b. Would your advice be the same if Robert’s confirmation letter advised Brian that he was only able to fulfil half of Brian’s order and delivered only half of what Brian ordered? Support your answer using case law