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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (50849)	6/13/2002 4:02:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

You misread. I was responding to your statement that there had to be a meeting of the minds on "its formally binding nature." I have previously discussed the need for a meeting of the minds. But what there has to be a meeting of the minds about is whether there is an offer, an acceptance, and consideration, in sufficient detail that a Court can determine what it was that the parties intended to take place. Whether or not the people think they are making a formally binding agreement is not part of what a court looks in to in deciding whether there was a meeting of the minds. (This issue comes in where one party thinks they're just joking. If the second person should obviously have realized it was a joke, no contract. For example, "I'll sell you my wife for $1.00" "I'll take her." Obviously, no contract. But we have the recent case of the company that offered a Toy Yoda and the winner sued them for a Toyota. I don't know how that came out, but she may well have a good case. They may have thought it was only a joke, but if she didn't, they may well be bound to a contract in their minds they didn't intend to make.) The Court will look at the facts and circumstances. It will decide whether there was an offer, an acceptance, and consideration. If so, unless it finds some grounds not to find a contract, the court will probably find a contract even if The court would not find a contract in the case of an obvious joke (the Court would not allow somebody to walk out of a store without paying for the book "Steal this Book") or an illegal transaction (a contract to buy crack cocaine is not enforcable, at least not in law, but maybe by a S&W). But if one person says "I didn't realize that by agreeing to pick up her son from day care I was entering into a legally enforceable contract" the Court will most likely say "doesn't matter. You made an agreement, its terms were sufficiently clear to establish the basic elements of an agreement, and I'm going to enforce it." I'll say it again -- go spend a day in Small Claims court. It will open your eyes.

To: Neocon who wrote (50849)	6/13/2002 4:08:32 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Another note on what you quoted: The "meeting of the minds" is a useful phrase to help determine in your own mind whether you ever got past the bargaining stage of negotiations. Consider negotiations to buy a new car. Things go back and forth. Price. Warranty. Will they include A/C. Etc. That's all the bargaining process. At some point, you either get a meeting of the minds on these terms, or you walk out. Once you have a meeting of the minds, you have a contract, even if one party thought they could still duck out on it. What you're running up against is why Contracts is a full semester course in law school, and not just a one-hour lecture. You can't just pull a snippet from a web site and think you understand the law of contracts. My contracts casebook is 1,586 pages long. The one volume edition of Corbin on Contracts is 1,224 pages long, and that's the short version. You're like somebody who quotes "Aristotle says the purpose of life is to be happy" and thinks they understand all there is to know about Aristotle's theory of the purpose of life.