Why were the maximum legal tender limits for coins eliminated?

[Alley_Dweller]

@Bremidon

I did run into several claims that the Supreme Court has ruled on this, but I was unable to find a single cite, so I doubt that this is true. I did find one case where a court in Colorado refused payment in pennies, but I doubt that would hold up if challenged.

Commercial disputes are usually a matter of state law, so it would be difficult to find a United States Supreme Court decision.

However, the Gerogia state supreme court upheld a lower court ruling finding a defendant in contempt for trying to pay a $5000 judgment in pennies.

A man in Texas tried to pay a lawyer bill in pennies. The lawyer accepted the pennies and then sued the man for bank fees plus $150 an hour in expenses. The lawyer prevailed. On appeal, the Texas 11th upheld the judgment.

A South Carolina man attempted to pay child support in pennies. He was found in contempt of court and sentenced to ten days in jail plus a $250 fine. The Court of Appeals of South Carolina refused to overturn on procedural grounds.

And, finally, from Herman Oliphant, the Theory of Money in the Law of Commercial Instruments, 29 Yale LJ 606, 609 (1920)

Using the word, money, in the broadest sense, the following attributes of the things included thereunder may be distinguished: (i) By legislation some kinds of money are made legal tender of payment of some or all kinds of debt." The effects of this attribute are that, if such money is tendered by a debtor in strict compliance with all the numerous and exacting requirements of a proper tender and the tender is refused, interest as an element of damages ceases to accumulate, the creditor may not thereafter in an action to collect the debt recover his costs, parties secondarily liable are discharged and securities on property are lost.15

[Alley_Dweller]

@Bremidon

Sorry, I’m not following. Are you saying that the bill generated by the contract is not an instrument for this purpose?

And the definition of instrument is: instrument n. 1) a written legal document such as a contract, lease, deed, will or bond. 2) an object used to perform some task or action, ranging from a surgeon’s scalpel to any hard thing used in an assault (a blunt instrument).

It does not matter what your legal dictionary or some web site you found says the definition of an instrument is when the statute you are quoting contains an explicit definition of what it considers an instrument to be. The definition of an “instrument” contained in Article 3 of the UCC overrides any external meaning for purposes of interpreting Article 3 of the UCC.

To put it more colorfully, if Article 3 of the UCC said “for purposes of this Article, a cow is an animal with wings and feathers that flies” then for purposes of interpreting Article 3, you would have to assume that a canary was a cow.

And, yes, I am saying that the definition of instrument contained in Article 3 excludes a bill generated by a contract. In fact, the definition of an instrument contained in Article 3 is the exact opposite of a bill. A bill, in common usage, is a demand to pay. An instrument in Article 3 is a promise to pay.

[gotpasswords]

[QUOTE=Musicat]
Server error. Couldn’t post, then was told this was a duplicate. Maybe the server error caused the confusion?
[/QUOTE]

Yep. 12/31/1969 is Day One for Unix. I wasn’t aware of any problems here lately, but it sounds like something put a server here into “Hello world! Are you my mommy?” mode for a while.