Talk:Consideration
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in the foakes v beer case ,where beer insisted on interest being paid to her after foakes already paid th suym in installments.it is said that she is entitled to the interest , as her promise to accept the bare debt was not supported by any consideration from foakes.discuss the rule of the case and state in what situation this would not apply.
Clarity
As someone with no legal background I found this article hard to understand. Does it mean that any contract I enter into with another person or persons requires that something must actually exchange hands? For example if I enter into a three-way contract with 2 other people we have to include something like 'the consideration for this contract is £1' and then each give the other two people a pound? --HappyDog 17:23, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Clarification
I agree that the article is poorly written. Unfortunately, contract law is typically a two-semester class in American law schools, and about half of the first semester is typically dedicated to the doctrine of consideration. The short answer is that there must be consideration for a contract to be binding. The "bargain theory" of consideration is that a promise that is bargained for has consideration. Your example of the one-pound payment to each person is what would be called "nominal consideration," and is not valid because it was not bargained for.
In the United States, a case directly on point is Schnell v. Nell, 17 Ind. 29, 79 Am. Dec. 453 (Indiana 1861), where Schnell promised to give each of the three beneficiaries of his wife's will $200 over a period of three years in exchange for one cent, which the document even claimed was "consideration." The Indiana Supreme Court held that consideration cannot take the form of direct exchange of money in unequal amounts.
There are times when a substitute for consideration will come into play; this substitute may be a wax seal (mostly abolished in the US, I don't know about England), reliance (I promise to sell you my Ferrari, you build a $90,000 Ferrari garage that works for nothing else, and then I break the promise; you had $90,000 of reliance on my promise and that could substitute for consideration), etc.
Maybe someday I'll rewrite the article. On a side note, I'm pointing out on the seal (device) talk page that it should discuss how a seal can be a substitute for consideration. If anyone sees this and knows the history, please fix that. Thanks. :) Ari 06:05, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Consideration under English law
Should this really be on a separate page? If so, why don't we have things such as Contract under English law? Then do we need Consideration under Australian law? I think that we should put these things into the same article, but under different headings - but until I get some responses, I will continue to add to the English law page. Enochlau 18:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)