How much opportunity to review terms is necessary to form a contract?

Question

Someone makes me a contract offer for, say, a health insurance plan. They set a deadline by which I must accept or reject the offer.

I inquire as to the full terms of the offer. They say that the terms are not available yet, but that they will be made available sometime before the deadline. I provisionally accept the offer based on a summary of the terms, since I can change my mind up until the deadline.

How far in advance of the deadline do the terms have to be made available for them to be part of the contract? If they are published 5 minutes before the deadline to withdraw, and they are 100 pages long, it seems a stretch to say that I had notice and could have inquired as to the terms. I did inquire and was denied meaningful access to them. But a 100 page document could take many hours to review, and some people read slowly, and lawyers are not generally kept on call for immediate opinions. So is one hour enough? Or one day? Even a very short document released one second before the deadline isn't really available to read.

Answer 1

The law generally imposes no requirement to provide an offeree time to review contract language before agreeing to it.

The parties are at all times free to negotiate the length of time the offer will remain open. If either side demands more or less time than the other is willing to accept, they are free to refuse the contract.

Agreeing to the contract despite the narrow window results in a valid contact nonetheless.

There are likely consumer-protection laws providing the offeree greater protection in specific contexts, but I don't know of any that would apply to an offer for health insurance coverage.