A Research Report Submitted to Mzumbe University – Mbeya Campus College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Award of the Degree of Bachelor of Law (LL. B) of the University of Mzumbe.
This study was undertaken on the freedom of free consent to standard form contracts in concluding Contracts in the case of Tanzania. Contract is a term that entails the agreement of two parties that is enforceable by the law. Under the eyes of law of contract, mutual consensus or consent of parties when entering into the contract is very essential. On other hand, the standard form contract is seen to lack consent of one of the parties to the contract, no time for the parties to negotiate and may contain terms which are favorable to the offeror. Thus, the researcher decided to conduct this study purposely to make analysis mainly on the formation of standard form contract and the principle of free consent under the law of contract Act of Tanzania. According to the findings, it is observed that the standard form contracts to some extend contradict some provisions of the Law of Contract Act and these contracts are unfair to the weaker party.
The research contains five chapter whereby chapter one is analyzing the general introduction including the introduction, background of the problem, statement of the problem, hypothesis, objectives of the study, importance of the study, research design and methodology and lastly limitation of the study.
Chapter two is about conceptualization of terms as used in the study, whereby under this chapter the researcher has provided the meaning of contract, the researcher also has provided explanation of the essential elements of valid contract including offer, acceptance, consideration, principle of free consent and the meaning of the law of contract.
Chapter three is about legal framework, which contains the municipal instruments and case law. Chapter four is analyzing about research findings whereby under this chapter the researcher has offered answers on that the standard form contracts do contradict with some provisions stipulated under the Law of Contract Act of Tanzania and recommended that the standardized form contract controvert the Law of Contract Act of Tanzania. But also, the researcher noticed that standard form contracts are unfair because their terms are made without consent of both parties, they don’t have a room for bargaining and mostly the offeror use that chance to formulate the terms in favor of himself and of advantageous to the offeree
Lastly is chapter five which analyzes about summarization of the study, whereby the researcher has presented the comprehensive summary about the whole study but also the researcher has presented the conclusion and lastly the researcher has presented recommendations on what to be done in regulating and applying the standard form contracts in Tanzania.