Question

Exercise Content

This is your First Life Skills Assignment. Life Skills Assignments are worth a combined 20% of your class final grades.

You are a legal assistant for the attorney of the FUN company. For this assignment you must conduct research and find three (3) court opinions (i.e. cases that have been previously decided by the court) that are precedent (i.e. have similar facts and issues of law) to the case below. To receive credit for this assignment, you must provide the case title and citation of each of the three (3) cases you find.

Three months ago the CEO for FUN Company sent a letter to the Pastor for the Church of Stranger Things pledging a $3,000,000.00 donation to the Church. Upon receipt of this news, the Pastor contacted FUN’s CEO who re-assured the Pastor that the Church would be receiving a check for this amount within the ensuing four to six weeks. The Pastor, who for several years had wanted to expand the Church in order to increase its congregation, immediately hired an architect and paid him $400,000.00 to design the new ambitious project. The Pastor was in love with the architect’s design, so he quickly hired a general contractor for $750,000.00 to start the building process. In addition to the $750,000.00 for the labor, the Pastor paid another 1,100,000.00 for the tools and materials needed for the project. Five weeks after receiving the letter and first speaking to FUN’s CEO on the phone, the bishop called FUN because he was nervous about the fact that he had not received the check and he had already incurred such significant expenses. Note that the only reason the Pastor engaged in this ambitious construction project was because of the extra money he was counting on getting from FUN since the Church’s structure did not need it to continue its regular operations. The CEO at that point told the Pastor that soon after committing to donate the money, FUN’s finances started going terribly wrong and as such at this point, they were not able to make a donation to the church. The Pastor is now demanding that FUN still true to its word and give the church the donation.

Answer 1

Based on the above case facts, Church of Stranger Things has a legal right to claim the donation, and FUN Company is legally liable for fulfilling its promise.

According to the legal doctrine of promissory estoppel, which falls under contract law, if a party (promisor) makes a promise to another party (promisee), such that the promisee reasonable relies on the promise and enforcement of the promise will establish justice, then the promisor is legally liable for keeping his or her promise.

Certainly, based on the above case, FUN Company made a promise to donate $3,000,000.00 to The Church of Stranger Thing. Because of reliance on the promise and the goal to use the donation to expand the church, the pastor of the church incurred expenses in buying materials and hiring an architect, a general contractor and labor. For this reason, the pastor of the church reasonable relied on the promise of donation and lack of enforcement would create injustice. Therefore, under the legal doctrine of promissory estoppel, the pastor of the church or Church of Stranger Things has a legal to right to enforce the promise or demand reliance damages from FUN Company.