Many times in reality shows the contestants will make oral agreements between themselves. Are those agreements legally binding?
For example, say that there’s a contest where whoever can keep their hands on a car the longest will win the car and nominate two people to be voted off the show. Norm and Cliff are the last two people with their hands on the car. After many hours they strike a deal. Norm says he will remove his hand from the car if Cliff will nominate Sam and Diane. Cliff agrees and Norm removes his hand. When nomination time comes, Cliff does not follow through on the agreement. He nominates Carla and Woody instead. Does Norm have any legal recourse against Cliff?
No. Never heard of that show. But the tactic is one very common in reality shows. All contestants start some endurance contest and they drop out one-by-one. Eventually 2 are left and they usually setup some sort of deal where one person will bow out if the other person agrees to some request.
One necessary criterion for a valid contract is consideration given to all parties. Essentially that each side “gets something” out of it. I suppose one might argue in this case that the consideration for Cliff is that he will the guaranteed winner of this mini-contest, and thus not subject to being voted off. The consideration for Norm, would be that he gets the two people he wants (presumably also not himself) voted off. It seems that this might be particularly weak consideration on both sides.
One also has to consider that if this were considered a valid oral contract, and it was not upheld by Cliff, the only recourse Norm could take would be to sue Cliff in civil court for breech of contract. How would one calculate the “damages” that should be awarded to Norm due to his “not getting the people he wanted voted off”?
Please understand that I’m not a lawyer, nor have I studies law in any meaningful way. The above is just an intelligent guess. Take it for what it’s worth.
I’m no great fan of reality shows, in fact I almost never watch them, but my understanding is that such agreements are against the rules and would lead to both contestants being disqualified.
Certainly, in UK’s Big Brother someone got kicked out after he was caught sending notes to make arrangements with the other contestants.
I’ll guess that there are similar rules in all such shows.
I’m not a fan of the Survivor-type shows, but a key component of them seems to be various contestants making alliances amongst themselves. I recall episodes of the American version of “Weakest Link” in which the contestants admitted on-camera that they had formed an alliance to vote off people in a particular order. So at least on some shows such alliances aren’t against the rules and if it’s good for ratings they’re most likely encouraged.
As the great movie mogul Sam Goldwyn is credited with saying, “A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” If it isn’t written down, it can’t be proven, therefore it doesn’t exist (it being a contract in this case).
Incorrect. First of all, a verbal contract is a contract using words (possibly written down OR spoken) as opposed to a non-verbal contract which can be thought of as an implied contract. You’re thinking of an oral contract. Secondly, [del]the great[/del] San Goldwyn is absolutely wrong in any literal sense. An oral contract is every bit as binding as a written one, providing (as you note) that it can be proven to exist. Mr. Goldwyn’s [del]wisdom[/del] statement is hardly appropriate here since presumably the entire exchange would be captured on video.
Would you perhaps like to offer a cite for your legal assertion that oral contracts can’t be proven and are therefore non-existent? It is certainly true that oral contracts have proof problems associated with them. This does not mean that oral contracts are not legally binding and fully enforceable.
The question of this thread is whether the example offered in the OP constitutes a contract. IMHO it does, as it includes the necessary basic components of a contract (offer, acceptance, consideration to both sides, legality and capacity of all parties to contract) but as Jayrot noted it would be a difficult contract to enforce if it came to it.
Reality show [del]idiots[/del] contestants have to sign off on a long legal form that covers a whole bunch of stuff, e.g., not revealing any info about an episode ahead of time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a clause limiting contestants suing other contestants about such agreements.
So many reality show contestants have lied so many times that I can’t imagine any civil recourse would exist or we would have seen it. [del]Kaysar[/del] Norm is simply screwed and that lying backstabber [del]Jen[/del] Cliff is going to get away with it.
Verty true. I wonder, also, if the context might play a part as well. That is, that this agreement is taking place during essentially an every-man-for-himself contest. Perhaps a reasonable person wouldn’t expect offers made to be genuine. As a more extreme example: During a Poker game, two players make an oral contract along the lines of “If you tell me what cards you have, I’ll tell you what cards I have.” One player makes good on his end of the deal and the other, of course, lies. How would this play out, I wonder?
Depends on the rules of the house, but in pretty much any casino I would imagine that both hands would be ruled dead and the players ejected from the game.