Alternate title: contract law

Unenforceable transactions

In all systems of contract law, certain classes of transactions are treated as unenforceable by the judicial process because they are thought to involve unusual hazards for a contracting party or to be of marginal social utility. There are, in both civil-law and common-law systems, four kinds of concern that lead the systems to treat certain types of transaction as unenforceable. These four kinds of concern may be called evidentiary, cautionary, channeling, and deterrent. The evidentiary concern springs from the desire to protect both the individual citizen and the courts against manufactured evidence and insufficient proof. The cautionary concern seeks to safeguard the individual against both his own rashness and the importuning of others. The channeling concern seeks to mark off or label obligations that may be enforceable and to direct attention to the problem of the extent and kind of the legal obligation, so that the individual will know the legal significance that his action may have. Finally, the deterrent concern refers to those types of transaction that are discouraged because they are felt to be of doubtful value to society.

Two quite different techniques are used to delineate types of transaction that are unenforceable in their natural, or normal, state. The first proceeds by describing the type in functional or economic terms. The common-law Statute of Frauds enacted by the English Parliament in 1677 provided that the following six kinds of contracts should be unenforceable unless expressed in writing: contracts to sell goods exceeding a certain value; contracts to sell any interest in land; agreements that are not to be performed within a year of their making; agreements upon consideration of marriage; suretyship agreements; and undertakings by an executor or administrator to be surety on a debt of the deceased for which the estate is liable. Civil-law systems typically describe as unenforceable in the absence of an appropriate formality noncommercial contractual obligations exceeding a certain value; mortgages created by contract; noncommercial compromise agreements; marriage contracts; agreements binding a party to transfer all, or a fractional part of, his property; leases to run for more than a year; assumptions of the obligation to stand as surety, at least when the operation is not a commercial one on the surety’s part; promise of an annuity; and promises to make gifts.

Another less direct technique for delineating unenforceable types of transaction derives from the common law’s doctrine of consideration. It holds transactions unenforceable in the absence of a bargained-for exchange. This class would include, for example, promises to make gifts. The approach tends to be too all-embracing, treating certain types of transaction as suspect when there is little or no practical justification for doing so. It is not clearly demonstrated, for example, that an option agreement made by two businessmen should be handled differently from many other kinds of commercial dealings. A strong argument exists that the common law’s handling of commercial options, business compromises, and other business transactions lacking an element of exchange is more a logical deduction from the general doctrine of consideration than an expression of justifiable policy concerns.

Except in cases where the ground for unenforceability is radical, when a given transaction type is considered unenforceable the legal system should prescribe an extrinsic element the addition of which will cure the defect—for example, expressing the agreement in writing, performing it in part, or having a document drawn up with the participation of a legally qualified notary or other public official who holds a special appointment from the state and is charged with handling and recording various types of transactions.

A complex situation has arisen with respect to the two most generally available extrinsic elements, the seal and the payment of a nominal consideration. Various states of the United States no longer consider the seal as an effective extrinsic element. The seal’s decline is rooted in its changed significance in the modern, literate, democratic world. The seal was originally an impression, usually in wax, of a device, or design, representing an individual or a family. In modern times, the courts, with legislative assistance in a fair number of the states of the United States, have recognized easy-going substitutes for the wax seal, such as simple writing presumed to have been made for sufficient consideration or, in special circumstances, parol agreement for valid consideration. The effect has been to render the seal progressively less effective, particularly from the cautionary perspective, and many courts now refuse to accept it as a satisfactory formality.

Nominal consideration is a subtle and ingenious formality. Its essence is the introduction of a contrived element of exchange into the transaction. Thus A, desiring to bind himself to give B $10,000, requests B to promise to give (or to give) A a peppercorn in exchange. B’s promise (or performance) is an element, extrinsic to a normal gift promise, introduced by the parties in an effort to render the transaction enforceable (since the law does not treat normal gift promises as enforceable). Common-law courts often accept nominal consideration when used in a business context, such as in an option arrangement or a compromise agreement; its effectiveness is understandably more doubtful in the context of a gift promise, since such a transaction involves greater dangers for one party and is socially more marginal.

Civil-law systems have less need than the common law for a formality such as nominal consideration; they prescribe methods directly in their statutes. Interestingly enough, however, in some civil-law systems an analogous, judicially developed formality has emerged—the disguised donation (donation déguisée) of French law, in which the parties cast a gift promise in the form of an onerous transaction, such as a sale. It can be argued that both the nominal considerations and the disguised donation serve at least the cautionary and channeling functions of formalities mentioned above.

Another kind of extrinsic element recognized by some courts, especially in the common-law countries, is one party’s reliance upon the promise of the other. The fact of reliance argues in favour of enforcement because it indicates that an underlying understanding existed between the parties and because the relying party may suffer as a consequence of his change of position. Some courts will enforce initially suspect transactions when several extrinsic elements are present in combination. A common-law court, for example, may enforce a gift promise in which the element of reliance was present in addition to a seal or a nominal consideration. Other extrinsic elements, either alone or in combination with reliance, a seal, or a nominal consideration, may also render a transaction enforceable. Cases, for example, in which the promisor dies without attempting to revoke a gift promise could be enforced, as distinguished from cases in which the promisor seeks to revoke.

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