No Consideration

This evening I was sent the response from the taxpayer’s attorney, Craig Hunter, to the motion by the school district’s attorney asking the Court to impose a security bond on the plaintiffs.

I had been favorably impressed with the clarity of the Defense Attorney’s writings. I am delighted by the clarity and logic in our attorney’s reply. There’s no single sentence which sums it all up but one line of its many arguments made me smile.

“There is no valid reason why the school district would agree to a management contract before there was any agreement on price.”

My Dad was an attorney and taught Contract law in the Business Department at Mankato State University. I’m strictly a Liberal Arts kind of guy and only took three business classes before graduating, typing, economics and contract law – from my Dad.

I wanted the legal case to stop the Red Plan to be founded on the lofty plain of Constitutional law and our 14th Amendment rights. That was not to be. However, If we win this case on the same issues I once studied in my Dad’s class that would be very gratifying.

I googled a bit to find the legal terms I once studied and found this Q&A which describes a legal contract:

Q. How do the concepts of offer acceptance and consideration work together to create a valid contract?
In: Incorporation

A. An offer first sets out the terms/conditions of a contract. For example, I have offered you a car in exchange for £1,000.

An acceptance means that you are willing to be legally bound by this offer and you will pay £1,000 for my car.

Simply put, consideration is defined as a value paid for the promise of an act, service, item, etc. Both parties will gain something from the transaction.
In the example, the £1,000 would be consideration for my car.

However, if I simply said “I will give you my car” and you accepted, I would not be legally bound to give you the car and you could not sue me. This is because you have not given me any consideration in exchange. Without consideration, a contract cannot be formed.

Or as Craig Hunter likes to tell me. You don’t go to a car dealership and agree to buy a car first and then wait to be told by the dealer how much the car is going to cost you. Unless you are the Duluth School Board.

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