Steven Wright told the joke that he was with his friend and they both got mugged so he said “wait” to the mugger, then repaid his friend a $100 debt he owed. The punchline is that the mugger pulls $1,000 out of his own pocket, gives it to the friend, and then at gunpoint makes Steven Wright borrow $1,000 from his friend, then mugs them both and takes all the money.
I think it’s obvious that if you try to repair a debt, knowing full well that the payment will be confiscated, then you aren’t acting in good faith and the payment doesn’t count. You might as well try paying a debt with money that is on fire, or marked bills from a bank robbery.
I think the timing is everything. The very moment the cash switches hands, the debt is paid. Getting robbed 5 seconds later would be no different than getting robbed 5 weeks later. The debt was paid.
As everyone else in this thread has been saying, timing doesn’t matter at all, and 5 seconds before the robbery, the debt was never paid.
All that matters is whether you knew the robbery would result in loss of the cash. If you pay when you know that the cash will be lost, then it doesn’t matter whether it occurs 5 seconds or 5 weeks before the robbery.
If you know the robbery is about to occur in 5 seconds, then you know full well that you will lose the money of you keep it, and the lender will lose the money if they receive it. Debt clearly not paid.
If you know the robbery is about to occur in 5 weeks, then you will normally have no reasonable way of knowing that either you or the lender lender will have the money on them when the robbery occurs. Debt is paid in full.
If you somehow know that the cash will be lost 5 weeks in advance, the debt is still not paid.
If you try to pay a debt with currency that you know has no value to you, and that you know can never be redeemed by the lender, then no court in the world would consider the debt paid. Timing is irrelevant.
No, no, and no.
As long as you are not a co-conspirator of the robbery or had no hand in the crime, then the debt was legitimately repaid. Once the cash switched hands, it’s not the borrower’s responsibility to ensure that the lender holds on to his money.
Look at it another way. Jeff can repay David $200, somehow *knowing *that David will absentmindedly let the loose cash fall out of his pocket into a river just a few minutes later, losing all of it. But the debt was repaid. Whether David held on to the cash or not wasn’t Jeff’s responsibility.
And that is where it all falls down. There is no way of knowing this.
Now compare that to the example used above.
Suppose Jeff can repay David $200 with notes that he has set on fire and scattered across the room. The notes are legal tender at the exact second they are relinquished, they will just burn away before they can all be collected.
The debt has clearly not been repayed. And for exactly the same reason that the debt has not been repayed in the OP. You can’t pay someone with currency that you reasonably suspect they will be unable to redeem. That’s not a *bona fide *repayment. Good faith is a requirement in all transactions.
In any real world example you can think of where a debt is payed with currency that the debtor reasonably suspects can’t be used, the debt isn’t considered payed. Your example of where somebody “somehow” knows something is meaningless because there is no way of *reasonably *knowing such a thing.
Come up with an example of where that could reasonably be known and you will see how untenable it is.
Suppose Jeff treated the notes with a chemical that will cause them to crumble to dust in one hour’s time. Suppose the money is treated with a drug that will cause David to lose it. Suppose it is provided in container that teleports itself away from David. Suppose that the money is in a container that contains a transmitter, and Jeff gives the tracer to a thief so the thief knows who to mug. Suppose Jeff tells a thief that he owes money to that David has money and is a good target. Suppose it contains a dye bomb that renders it unusable. Suppose Jeff places the notes in a 200 pound safe and then offers it to David while he is swimming in the ocean.
In all cases, the debt is not considered paid because the money was never handed over in good faith. As soon as Jeff reasonably believes that the currency couldn’t be redeemed, there is no *bona fide *attempt at repayment.
As someone alluded to above, laws are intended to ensure the smooth function of society through application of principles of justice. They aren’t intended to be allow people to game the system through adherence to the letter and not the spirit. Judges and juries both tend to take a really dim view of those sorts of shenanigans.
Good luck convincing a court that a repayment in these circumstances was made in good faith. And if you can’t do that you are screwed.
I would think the person receiving the money would have some say as to whether he’s willing to receive it at that moment. If I have my hands up and my “friend” shoves $200 in my pocket, that doesn’t automatically mean he’s paid off his $200 debt. Sorry, I’m not receiving debt payments at this time, so you’re just storing your money in my pocket.
Now if he offers me the money to repay the debt at that time and I agree, then the debt paid off, even if we both know the robber is going to take the money five seconds later.
Two guys meet up to settle a debt. They have a beer. Then Debtor says “Here’s your cash”, and Creditor says “Thanks.” Suddenly, a Robber jumps up and demands all their money. The debt has been paid, even though the money was then taken by someone else.
They meet up, have a beer, but before Debtor can say anything, the Robber jumps up and demands everybody’s cash. Debtor quickly says “Here’s your money” to the Creditor. Creditor says, “Not on your life, you cheap bastard.” Debt has not been paid. Debtor trying to stuff the money in Creditor’s pocket, or dropping it in his lap, or even sticking it in his hand to hand over to the Robber does not count. The debt is not paid.
They meet up and have a beer, Debtor says “Here’s your cash.” Before Creditor can respond, a Robber jumps up and demands everybody’s money. Unless Creditor decides to say “Man, that sucks, let’s call it even”, the debt hasn’t been paid. It would be the same thing as if
Debtor says “Here’s your cash” and a thief, seeing money about to change hands, nabs it and goes on the run. Debt not paid yet.
I have a real ife situtation, I purchased a car from my brother for $3,600. We took it for a ride and stopped off for lunch. While we were eating lunch the car was stolen. In this particular case he still had insurance to cover it so we were both ok. I often wondered how we would have handled that had he not had the car insured.
I think you misunderstood his post. It appears that he’s saying, absent a receipt, you have no way to prove you satisfied a debt. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, witnesses, cancelled checks, etc. But a receipt remains the best protection IMHO.
Of course you have a way to prove you satisfied the debt: your testimony. The factfinder may not believe you, but then the factfinder could just as easily find that you forged your receipt.
Getting back to the OP, there is no rule that governs this situation. A contractual agreement requires a non-illusory promise (“I’ll pay you” is enforceable, while “I’ll pay you if I feel like it” is not) but there is no “illusory performance” doctrine. Given that, the payment is probably a valid discharge of the debt. There is no way for the debtor to know that the robber will complete the robbery.
At common law, the buyer bore the risk of loss once an enforceable contract existed. Most states have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (Article 2 covers the sale of goods, which without going into great detail means any tangible property that is not real estate). Article 2 also puts the risk of loss on the buyer once the seller has tendered the goods (there is a more complicated rule that governs what happens if the seller tells the buyer to come and pick them up, or ships them.)
I disagree. Not only for the reasons stated above, but also because of the “implied in fact” or “implied in law” terms that should be read into the contract. If we have a contract for anything and one of the terms is that I will pay you money, it is assumed by both parties that I will do so in a semi-customary manner. I won’t airdrop $100 bills or pennies over your house, tie currency to an arrow and fire it at your head, or break down the door to your bathroom to pay you while you are taking a dump. Likewise, I won’t pay you in an extraordinary situation where you are about to be robbed.
I think almost every judge in the common law world would rule that those terms were implicit in our contract and hold that the attempt to pay prior to robbery is an invalid tender of payment.
Also keep in mind “course of dealing” and “course of performance” and “usage of trade”. Those tricky Bar exam bastards will try to get you on this. For example, the UCC says that if place of delivery is not specified, then it defaults to seller’s place of business, right?
Wrong! Don’t circle that answer; they just tricked you. If I order something online, for example, but there was no specification as to the place of delivery, it would be an implied term of the contract that it was to be shipped to my home. Why? Because that is what always happens when you order a consumer product online. I don’t drive 2,300 miles to the seller’s warehouse. A judge would imply that term into the contract. The UCC default only applies after all of the other possible contractual doctrines are exhausted.
So, in the scenario with the two brothers and the car sale, I think the controlling question would be when the parties believed that the transfer of ownership was made, and not a strict interpretation of when the car was tendered to the buyer.
I hope it depends on whether the lender accepted the payment or not. Taking it into his hands would be implicit agreement. Stuffing the money in his pocket does not make it his money. If it was cocaine, would that be his cocaine (stuffed during a bust)? No – not even if he was owed the cocaine!
I think the assumption is that the lender doesn’t lie. If the lender lies, then sure, the lack of a receipt is the practical issue. But we’re discussing an ethical question, not just “who’d win if he lies about it?”
Whoever raised the receipt issue in the first place was probably talking about a practical matter. But I’m more interested in the answer when the lender doesn’t lie. “Yes, he stuffed $100 into my pocket, just as we were being robbed. I said ‘No way man!’ but he persisted. I believe he still owes me $100.”
I hope the judge would find for the lender in this case. But law often doesn’t work out the way we’d like.
Ethically, there’s no question: the debt isn’t repaid.
Legally, I can only hope.
To those who say that the debt isn’t paid off: Suppose that there happens to be a policeman nearby, who witnesses the mugging and catches the mugger in hot pursuit. The cop then gives the money back to the men from whom it was stolen. Does the debtor now have to pay the creditor again?
Some years ago a work colleague took the afternoon off to collect his brand new car, the first she had ever owned. On her way home, she stopped off at her hairdresser to cancel the appointment she had made - while inside, some scrote took off with the car.
She had, of course, borrowed the money to pay for the car, so when her insurer refused to pay out, citing ‘reasonable care’ because she had left the keys in the ignition, she found that for the next three years she was going to be paying monthly payments for a car she didn’t have.
If I order something online, for example, but there was no specification as to the place of delivery, it would be an implied term of the contract that it was to be shipped to my home. Why? Because that is what always happens when you order a consumer product online. I don’t drive 2,300 miles to the seller’s warehouse. A judge would imply that term into the contract. The UCC default only applies after all of the other possible contractual doctrines are exhausted.