CBS News source and AP source. I am not interested in the politics or morality of any of this in this thread. What I’m interested in is how debt works: If a party attempts to pay someone else’s debt and is rebuffed, is the debt still valid?
I ask because it’s on the currency, for one: THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE is right there. I understand that grabbing something in a store and bringing it to the counter isn’t a debt, but that isn’t what’s happening here. The school alleges a debt exists. The CEO wants to pay that debt, using money. The school doesn’t want to allow the CEO to pay the debt. When do legal tender laws kick in?
Did he actually offer cash or just say he’d pay it? I kind of assume he was intending to cut a check for which I don’t imagine legal tender would apply.
There is no contract between the CEO and the school, so they are not obliged to take his money if they don’t want to. Promise, consideration, performance.
“Legal Tender” does not mean “must always be accepted by anyone for anything”. It means if someone asks you to pay and you offer cash they can’t claim you tried using an invalid method of payment. It doesn’t, however, force a person to accept that payment when they haven’t asked you for it.
I think the whole “legal tender” thing is a distraction and the question in italics in the OP (If a party attempts to pay someone else’s debt and is rebuffed, is the debt still valid?) is interesting without involving it.
In all probability, accepting this offer would probably be a lot of work for the school district. They would have to have employees go thru all the school lunch accounts, find the thousands of accounts in default, enter a payment for the individual amount owed, and then debit that amount from the funds he donated. A whole lot of bookkeeping & data entry work for the district.*
Maybe he should offer to donate a check for the past due lunch money to each family. Then that would put the bookkeeping burden of writing lots of individual checks for odd amounts on him, rather than the taxpayers of the district.
Personally, I’d think that it ought to be possible to write a program to do this automatically. That may be more or less difficult, depending on their swchool lunch accounting software.
Printing something on the currency doesn’t give it the force of law. It also says “IN GOD WE TRUST.” That doesn’t mean you have to go to church on Sunday.
I don’[t see how thats any more burden than it is currently - something/someone is keeping a tally on lunch money owed - all they need to know is that its now paid and zero it out.
IANAL, but the idea of a debt is just as much about a penalty on the debtor as it is money being owed to a creditor.
Suppose Trump is fined $100 million for some offense, and a wealthy friend steps in and says “I’ll pay the fine.” The judge could say, “no, this is a penalty on TRUMP.”
(Not exactly the same situation, but I think the principle applies)
I am a lawyer and don’t know the answer to this question. Couldn’t the parents agree that this CEO is their agent for the purpose of paying their delinquent bill?
I don’t know any principle of law that would require the person I contracted with to personally hand the money over. If Trump stays at my (fictional resort) and the secret service comes down to pay the bill, it seems unlikely that I could rebuff their payment under the guise that Trump is the legal debtor and I demand payment from him alone.
ETA: Or likewise, if I go to pay my hotel bill, can I demand to see J.W. Marriott IV personally as that was the man I contracted with?
Say I purposely broke a store window (I’m an adult) and someone else offered to pay for the damage. Could the store owner refuse the payment and force me to work off the debt for a lesson learned?.
If I was a donor, that wouldn’t give me assurances that they money would be used to pay off these debts.
Nonetheless, the original debate is still a good one, and I would like that to continue if the OP doesn’t mind.
I’m still unsure. IIRC, aren’t these things usually settled by looking at the terms of the contract (did it specify a particular way to pay?) and the good faith of the party making the payment? (For example, even in a contract without a specified method of payment, spreading nickels over the highway would not be a good faith payment method).
I would also be interested if they have taken third party payments in the past. If grandma pays the lunch bill when the parents fall behind, and they accept her check, what is their rationale for not accepting this guy’s check?
I think almost certainly not (Let’s put aside settlements out of court, and the criminal implications as that muddies the water). We assume that he sued you for damages to the window and won $300 compensatory damages and $600 punitive damages. Your old SDMB buddy UltraVires decides to pay him $900 on your behalf.
I (again am only thinking out loud) think that if it is made clear that I am acting as an agent on your behalf I don’t see any way that he could not accept that payment.
ETA: The civil legal system does not permit forced labor. Money damages are the order of the day, and if you are fortunate enough to have someone else footing the bill, then that is of no concern to the courts or to the store owner.
Now that the original question has been answered (or at least been overcome by events), I have a follow on question. If the school district didn’t accept payment by the CEO, would it be reasonable for them to continue to use school district resources to get the delinquent accounts to pay? Seems to me to be careless use of taxpayer money to continue to try to collect when they could have dealt with the CEO and been made whole.
I agree that the debate/question isn’t resolved by the acceptance of payment. I suspect the delay in acceptance was in part a “What do we do?” discussion between the agents of the school and the school board.
There’s also something to be said for not setting a precedent or expectation of future debt payment from a benefactor. It’s not detailed in the news articles if this was a one time event ($22K+ is a lot of lunches) or other smaller collections have been done in the past.
Why would there be a “what do we do” issue? Your accounts receivable are short by $22k and someone is willing to pay up. I know what I would do and what everyone else in the world would do, but I am not the government.
This “precedent or expectation” would be an issue to be resolved between the parents and the CEO, would it not? As long as the school is getting paid, they should not care by whom.
Also, they choose to extend credit voluntarily. The school I grew up in didn’t do this. My mother left the lunch money on the counter in the morning and when I got to school I bought a ticket (so the cooks could get an accurate count).
Now that my daughter is in school, she swipes her student ID and I get a bill every month.
I understand that there is the issue of “what if kids show up to school without money do you just let them starve” idea, but when you operate on credit, even for a noble purpose, you have to understand that there will be unpaid bills. It’s a cost of doing business in the private sector.
This is the government, where no one does anything without approval. From the article I linked above (my bold):
"State Rep. Aaron Kaufer, whose state district includes the school district, visited the school district’s central office in Kingston, Pa., on Wednesday and persuaded the school district’s board members to welcome charitable gifts.
Kaufer said there appeared to be some infighting among the board members about accepting outside money to cover the meal debt, but the precise reason for donors being ignored was not clear.
“I don’t understand either,” said Kaufer in an interview with NPR. “Nobody likes to see this kind of black-eye story in their area, but I want to see this issue resolved. This is not why we want to see northeastern Pennsylvania in the news.”
The school district will take money to satisfy cafeteria debts through a foundation dedicated to providing financial assistance to the school district, officials said."
Note the comment about infighting and that they’re not accepting the money directly, its going into a foundation that will disperse the money. It’s almost surely an accounting issue. In most companies, when you buy a postage stamp, the money you give isn’t credited directly to the Postage account, it goes into a Misc. Income account or a petty cash box. Yes, I’ve seen $0.49 added to a Misc. Income account and sometimes it’s a pain to reconcile. Crazy, but that’s accounting!
As for precedent/expectation. It may be a case of not letting the ‘bad guys’ win. While I’m sure the majority who let their accounts fall behind are truly experiencing financial difficulties, there’s also surely a minority that are trying to game the system. “Oh look, the nice CEO paid for us this time. I’m sure he or someone else will do it again. So yeah, don’t worry about paying for lunch anymore and you can have that PS4 you wanted!”. I don’t have a problem with people using their EBT card for steaks and lobster for a special occasion, but if they do it weekly, then I have an issue!
We had a related issue here 30 years ago when the tax department got rid of their cash tellers.
It was held that the tax department couldn’t impose further penalties or interest after refusing to accept a cash payment, and that the courts couldn’t / wouldn’t impose penalties to require payment in another form.
Those debts were still ‘valid’ after the tax department had refused payment, but only valid in a very philosophical sense until the tax department agreed to accept payment.