You go to walmart you ask the employee "how much is that TV". The employee says $999. No contract between you and Walmart has been effected. If you go back tomorrow to buy the TV and the price has risen to $1099 you can either make an agreement or not by handing over the money in exchange for a receipt and a TV. Importantly a quote must be different from a contract because virtually all contracts have conditions beyond price that must be satisfied in order to effect a deal between parties and discussing price is a way to clarify that that particular precondition has been met not an indication that all possible preconditions have been met.

An individual can be forgiven for not understanding the difference between a quote and a contract but a corporate lawyer never had that misunderstanding in the first place. When they tried to accept and they got a response that wasn't in the affirmative they understood that no deal had been struck. What they are trying to do is argue that a hypothetical lawyer, perhaps one that nearly failed out of school, could have incorrectly concluded from a 4 word email that an agreement had been made until the next email came in an hour later ergo the court should absolutely enforce that!

The purpose of contract law is to enforce the obligations that arise from legitimate meetings of minds not for highly paid corporate lawyers to play gotcha with laymen. If the meeting of minds in question wasn't sufficiently clarified in the 4 word email then follow up clarify mutual understanding and move forward. It appears that further clarification was sought AND in fact it made clear that there was no meeting of the minds at all. Now after the fact they would like the court to enforce what they wish the counter party had agreed to irrespective of what they actually intended.

Instead they should find someone who actually wants to do business with them instead of suing people that obvious have no desire to. The court should instead make them pay for the opposing sides legal bills and a penalty for bring a frivolous lawsuit that misunderstands centuries of commerce which understands the difference between discussion on price and affirmation of a deal something that would have been expressed by a handshake in person or a follow up email to the effect of "yes that will be fine then"