"Do you think that if I offer to meet someone for lunch, with a promise to pay, and he doesn't show up, I have a cause of action? What about if I take my wife out to dinner with the understanding that she will pick up my dry cleaning tomorrow, and she forgets? Should I invoke contract law and haul her into small claims court?"
I do not wish to intrude but legally there is a BIG difference in your examples.
The first is not a contract. The second is. You may not wish to enforce the second by suing your wife, but I am told it is a common practice in some places.
Incidently, the first example is not a contract because it contain no acceptance, express or implied.
The second, contains what is called an implied acceptance, when you say, with the understanding, if you BOTH understood that, the acceptance of contract would be the acceptance of the consideration, dinner. If you did not tell her or she had no way of knowing that YOU expected her to do the laundry, then no contract, no "meeting of the minds" can be implied.* The amount of damage and whether you wish to so are not legal issues.
Unless, of course, she had ordered the salmon, then that would be a completely different matter.
:))) <<<<<--------------------------!!!!
Defendent pleads guilty to one count of drive by posting.
* These issues may be further clouded if the couple reside in a community property state, because the "consideration" for the salmon might already be the wife's and therefor she gains nothing by acceptance. Consideration must be "new". But perhaps you don't have a clue as to what I am talking about and it would be simular to the concept of casing genuine pearls before imitation swine, but perhaps I have o'er shot my mark.
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