I just heard a news story about a guy with $700 in traffic tickets. He’s tried to pay them, with coins. The clerk’s office accepted a little over $100 in rolled coins and some unknown amount in loose coins. Now, they say they won’t accept any more coins. He’s been told that if the fines aren’t paid by a certain date, he will be jailed.
He says the reason he got the ticket in the first place is because of anti-government stickers on his car. :dubious:
I understand that the guy is doing it to be a PITA, but aren’t coins legal tender?
There is a common misconception that “legal tender” means that it must be accepted. This is not the case. A merchant or seller may specify the type of payment that will be accepted. If I offer to sell you a car for 50 pesos and you show up with dollars no law says I have to accept the offered dollars. As for this situation I would guess that a government office could argue that some asshole who wants to pay with unrolled penny’s would cause undue delay. They can tell him to either roll them up or come back with bills. I bet they could even tell him to pound sand if he tried to pay with one dollar bills. Now if he missed a deadline while trying to get acceptable denominations he could probably offer his forced delay as a defense unless he just said screw it and didn’t try to comply.
Just because they are legal tender doesn’t mean places have to accept them. Businesses and agencies can set whatever rules they like as to how they are to be paid. Some will accept only credit cards. Others only cash. I’d be willing to bet that this guy isn’t the first person to try this with this state’s DMV, and that they have a policy about loose coin that reflects this previous encounter.
Earlier posters are actually talking about something different than the scenario in the OP. It is true that merchants don’t have to accept any particular form of payment but that is because you haven’t incured a debt with them. They simply refuse to sell you something at all. However, the situation in the OP is a debt and presenting coins for payment should fulfill the obligation to pay off the debt whether the clerk’s office likes it or not. That is where the phrase “all debts, public and private” would apply.
Another issue for consideration is whether a fine is a “debt” prior to entry of a civil judgment. You can certainly choose to contest the fine by not paying it. If you go to court and win then it was not a debt.
I’m not really sure what this means. Is it consistent with the cases cited in the link? Although the question addresses governmental agencies, the author doesn’t explicitly respond to this part of the question.
Huh? You can certainly contest a ticket, but not paying it isn’t the way to do it. You’d need to demand a trial. If you don’t ask for a trial or pay the fine, they come and get you. There generally isn’t a “civil judgment,” and that’s not really the test for whether it’s a debt or not, anyway.
Requiring a judgment makes little sense in the context under discussion. You’re suggesting what? That I can pay in coin over a creditor’s objection, but only if I make him sue me for the money first? Do you think that’s what the drafters of the statute had in mind? Why?
NO. I don’t think you can be unreasonable (ie. attempting to pay a large debt with pennys) at any time. I don’t think “Legal Tender” means what most people think it means. But I am not familiar with the case law. I doubt you could pull up to the IRS payment office with truckloads of coins, maybe I am wrong. I get that if you owe a debt and the method of payment is not specified in the contract that you can try satisfy it with US currency. What I am not so sure about is whether you can try to pay with millions of pennys legal tender or not. Seems unreasonable to force the payee to dedicate significant resources to counting and bundling them.
PS. I was not offering an opinion abut fine vs. debt. I was really wondering whether a fine really is a debt prior to a judgment.
The cases (both of them! :D) seem to say that you can’t.
I think the simple answer to that question, is that the concepts don’t fit together well. If you get fined, you pay or you appeal the fine. In some cases, you might need to pay the fine under protest or pay and sue for a refund. But if don’t contest it, you’ve got to pay it and it might never result in a judgment–criminal fines will, civil infractions are assessed. Even if you appeal the ticket (or whatever document imposes the fine), there might not be a judgment that explicitly says you’ve got to pay the fine. For example, if you get a speeding ticket, the issue for trial is whether you are responsible for speeding–not whether you owe the money. In some jurisdictions, that’s what the judgment will say. In other words, it’s complicated.
I attempted to pay a large (bullshit) skytrain fine in canadian $1 coins. They wont accept them as payment? Lady spouted some nonsense about not having to take coins. Is this legit? They are dollars
The lady is not spouting nonsense. Dollar coins are legal tender, but Canada’s Currency Act sets limits on the size of debts for which you have to accept payment in coin payment. You can demand that they accept $1 coins in settlement of a debt of up to $25, but if the debt exceeds that amount they can decline to let you settle it in $1 coins.
This approach is common. Lots of countries’ legal tender laws have provisions designed to prevent people settling debts with inconveniently large amounts of comparatively small-value coins. The point of legal tender legislation is to facilitate financial transactions, not to give people smart-arse ways of buggering them up.
Traffic court is not a “merchant” or a “seller”. Nobody makes you shop at Valu-Rite or Ton-O-Food where they might or might not decide to set currency acceptance policies. You can’t just refuse to do business with traffic court. Well I guess you can if you want to go to jail, but you get the point. It’s not a situation where you are free to look around.
Legal Tender does (and this is really the whole purpose of the legal tender concept), mean that if a debt has been lawfully created, then the creditor may not reject a good faith payment in legal tender without seriously jeopardizing their ability to collect in court. Basically, the government doesn’t want something like this:
Bank: “Please pay your mortgage please.”
Debtor: “Here’s a check.”
Bank: “We don’t take those anymore.”
Debtor: “Ok, here’s a credit card.”
Bank: “We don’t take that crap either.”
Debtor: “Ok, here’s some cash.”
Bank: “Our policy is that we only accept crisp, new-looking 100 dollar bills, no twenties, fifties, or anything crinkled.”
…Time passes…
Debtor: “I finally found some new, crisp 100’s, here you go.”
Bank: “These are dated Series 2013, we now only accept bills dated between 1995 and 2003. Your are now gravely behind on your mortgage, please pay now or we will foreclose, you will lose your home, and a bad mark will be placed on your credit report.”
Bingo. If you walk into Best Buy and try to buy a stereo for a crate of nickels, they can tell you that they don’t want to sell you the stereo unless you offer some larger denominations of currency. If you owe Best Buy some money, and you didn’t sign a contract agreeing that the debt had to be paid a certain way (e.g. certified check only, no bills above 20 or below 5, only Visa or Mastercard, etc.), then they can’t start adding those conditions on later and interfere with your ability to settle the debt.
I realize this thread is going on seven years old, and I’m not sure if askeptic still posts here or not–Gfactor is still active, though.
In light of the answers given and references supplied, especially by those two posters, what the heck does “legal tender” mean (specifically in the context of U.S. law)?
It means that, once a debt exists, it can be settle by payment in legal tender currency - i.e. the creditor cannot refuse to accept currency which is legal tender.
It’s currently the case that legal tender in the US is unlimited - US currency is legal tender for all debts. But this doesn’t have to be the case; as already noted, other countries have limited legal tender provisions - Canadian dollar coins are legal tender for debts up to a certain amount. And in the past the US has had similar provisions; at one time, for example US silver coins were legal tender only for debts of up to $5.
In euroland, euro coins and notes are legal tender, but coins are limited - nobody can be obliged to accept more than 50 euro coins in settlement of a debt.
EG if you had limited it to cash payments to the federal court itself, that may be more of a single context.
But no matter, in summary, the principle of legal tender is that when you offer to pay with legal tender then the person/institution had better accept it as payment of a DEBT. Note I say debt. If some shop puts up a sign saying “Euro only” then so be it, you have to pay in Euro because there was no debt at the time .
The reason for the principle is so that the people who want the debt to be UNPAID… UNPAYABLE… don’t ignore payment of proper currency.
Many jurisdictions have made – enacted - laws that returned the right to refuse payment when its made with TOO MANY COINS. Also those high value notes may be refusable too.
But the thing is that law does not need to be acts of legislation… it can be common law… which means that a court has accepted and thus defined, that some amount of coins is too much… so context varies with jurisdiction perhaps. Generally the restriction is on coins, but can be on high value notes.
(also terrible legal advice).