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Posts Tagged ‘Regency contracts’

Jane Austen on Contracts to Dance

Posted in 19th Century England, jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Regency Customs, Regency Life, Regency Period, Regency style, Regency World, tagged , , , , , , on February 18, 2011| 1 Comment »

Inquiring readers: Recently I ran across the Contracts Prof Blog, a member of the Blog Professor Blogs network. Professor Franklin G. Snyder kindly granted me permission to reprint in full a second post written by Professor Jeremy Telman of Valparaiso University on February 1, 2010. (See the first post at this link.)  This post discusses the similarities and dissimilarities between a dance partnership and a marriage partnership in Northanger Abbey:

Image @Contracts Prof Blog

Thus the dashing Mr. Tilney addresses Catherine Morland, heroine of Northanger Abbey, upon discovering her in conversation with the odious Mr. Thorpe at the commencement of a dance:

That gentleman would have put me out of patience, had he staid with you half a minute longer. He has no business to withdraw the attention of my partner from me. We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not chuse to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours.”

The conversation proceeds on the similarities and dissimilarities between a dance partnership and a marriage partnership. But if Catherine really wanted to impress Mr. Tilney, she would have pointed out that his real complaint sounded in tortious interference rather than in breach of contract.
[Jeremy Telman]

Legal Definition of Tortious/Wrongful Intereference (in Business Relationship)

The theory of the tort or wrong of interference is that the law draws a line beyond which no one may go in intentionally intermeddling with the business affairs of others. So, a systematic effort to induce employees to leave their present employment and take work with another is unlawful when the purpose of such enticement is to cripple or destroy their employer rather than to obtain their skills and services in the legitimate furtherance of one’s own business enterprise.

It also becomes unlawful when the inducement is made through the use of untruthful means, or for the purpose of having the employees commit wrongs such as disclosing the former employer’s trade secrets. – ‘Lectric Law Library Lexicon

 

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Jane Austen and a Promise: Contract Law

Posted in 19th Century England, jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, Regency Period, Regency society, Regency World, tagged , , , , on February 17, 2011| 6 Comments »

Inquiring readers: Recently I ran across the Contracts Prof Blog, a member of the Blog Professor Blogs network. Professor Franklin G. Snyder kindly granted me permission to reprint in full the post contributed by Professor Jeremy Telman of Valparaiso University on March 18, 2010. Professor Telman discusses a promise made in Chapter 22 of Persuasion:

Cassandra Austen's watercolor of her sister Jane, c. 1810. Image at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Promise and Contract: Jane Austen’s Take

While thinking about the problems relating to promise and contract explored by Michael Pratt, I came across this scene from Chapter 22 of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The setting, of course, is Bath. The characters are Charles Musgrove and his wife, Mary, the pathetic, self-pitying and miserable sister of Jane Austen’s protagonist, Anne Elliot. Charles has just announced, with something like triumph, that he had procured tickets for them all to go to the theater the following evening. His wife interrupts him:

Good heavens, Charles! how can you think of such a thing? Take a box for to-morrow night! Have you forgot that we are engaged to Camden Place to-morrow night? and that we were most particularly asked to meet Lady Dalrymple and her daughter, and Mr Elliot, and all the principal family connexions, on purpose to be introduced to them? How can you be so forgetful?”

“Phoo! phoo!” replied Charles, “what’s an evening party? Never worth remembering. Your father might have asked us to dinner, I think, if he had wanted to see us. You may do as you like, but I shall go to the play.”

“Oh! Charles, I declare it will be too abominable if you do, when you promised to go.”

“No, I did not promise. I only smirked and bowed, and said the word `happy.’ There was no promise.”

To me, this example illustrates the tension between our ordinary language sense of what it means to make a promise and Professor Pratt’s focus on promissory intent. As the doctrine of promissory estoppel recognizes, manifestations that could be reasonably expected to induce reliance and do induce such reliance can create a legal obligation. But we ordinarily think of promissory estoppel as an equitable supplement to contracts law that addresses our moral intuition that, even absent a contract, it is wrong to allow people to induce others to rely to their detriment on one’s representations. I substitute the word “manifestations” for “promise” here because I think Professor Pratt is right that what the law enforces are not “promises” but legal undertakings — that is, expressions of intent to be legally bound by a statement of future intention.

So, Charles Musgrove did not “promise” in Professor Pratt’s sense, but he may have promised in the sense of the law. His manifestations might also be regarded by others in his social circle as a promise, which suggests some tension between our intuitions about what constitutes promising and Professor Pratt’s understanding of that phenomenon. I think this places me in the camp that Professor Pratt labels “deflationist.” I suppose I’ve been called worse.

In short, we might use the word “promise” to describe both statements that bind us because through them we undertake a moral obligation and moral obligations that arise because others reasonably rely on our representations regardless of our intent. Professor Pratt thinks there are good reasons for keeping these different types of moral obligation separate, but I am not persuaded that anything is gained from the distinction.
[Jeremy Telman]

Estoppel (definition from the Business Dictionary):

Legal rule of evidence (and not a cause of action) which (1) prevents a party from making an allegation or denial that contradicts what it had previously stated, or what has been legally established, as the truth, (2) supports a claim for damages of the party that had a good-faith reliance on a misleading representation of another party.

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