Are the Q&amp;A posted on Stack Exchange websites valuable consideration? In order to form a legally binding contract it is necessary that both parties provide valuable consideration. Is the provision by a user on this (or other Stack Exchange sites) of a question, answer or comment "valuable consideration" sufficient to form a contract?
Yes. There's no requirement that the consideration be objectively valuable, as there's no real standard for value; as long as there is some consideration, it can be offered for a contract. The peppercorn rule states that nominal consideration is sufficient to constitute consideration for the purposes of establishing a contract. Even if later, we decide that the comments or posts are no longer desired, it does not cease to be good consideration.
Does this still count as consideration, even though there was never any possibility of B getting anything out of it? Yes. The sole fact that the promisee and the beneficiary are different and unrelated entities does not invalidate a contract. In terms of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts at § 302(1)(b), what matters is that "the circumstances indicate that the promisee intends to give the beneficiary the benefit of the promised performance".
In general, "a signed piece of paper" is not "a contract". It may be a record of a contract, but the contract itself is the meeting of minds where an agreement is reached and doesn't depend on the existence of the piece of paper. (Depending on the jurisdiction, some sorts of contract are required to be in writing, but this doesn't usually apply to employment contracts; it's usually contracts involving land.) What is far more worrying to me is that you don't know how much they are going to pay you. That suggests there hasn't been a meeting of minds, and there is no contract. (It might be that "the going rate" is good enough to form a contract - to determine that would require advice from a local lawyer.) I suggest you don't write up a formal agreement, but nag your boss to decide how much they are actually going to pay you.
No, this is not an acknowledgement of guilt or liability. It offers a &quot;discount&quot; some sort of reduction in price. This could be an offer of settlement without admission of liability, or even just advertising for repeat business (unlikely as that may seem). Without the rest of the communication, there is no way to tell. Unless there are specific admissions, this statement alone is not likely to have much significance in such a case. Edit: There is still not enough context to tell exactly what the sender of this communication wanted to accomplish with the offer of the discount, but since the OP now says &quot;the party does not take the responsibility&quot; this is not an admission of guilt, whatever else it is. It sounds like some sort of backdoor form of settlement offer without admission, but that is far from clear to me. My original answer is not significantly hanged here.
The way law works is that you don't need to find a law which says you can do something. Instead, there needs to be an absence of a law which says you cannot do that thing. In other words, you can do anything you want so long as there isn't a law which says you can't. It's unlikely that you will find a law in any jurisdiction which says you cannot charge for a handshake. If you want the charge to be legally binding on the other party, then you need to ensure that the formalities of a valid contract are met. In particular, either each side needs to provide consideration (something of value) or the contract needs to be executed as a deed (england-and-wales). The party who pays the charge is clearly providing consideration. What about the handshake? Is it something of value? The rule is that consideration must be &quot;sufficient&quot; but does not need to be &quot;adequate&quot;. That means that it must have some value (however small) but it doesn't need to be valuable enough to be a fair bargain for the parties. This was confirmed by the House of Lords in Chappell &amp; Co. v Nestle Co. Ltd (1960) AC 97 (england-and-wales) which held that empty chocolate wrappers, which would be thrown away upon receipt, were sufficient consideration. A more common example of low-value but sufficient consideration is a &quot;peppercorn&quot; which is often used as token consideration where (in practical terms) a party is not offering anything of substance. Note that &quot;value&quot; doesn't need to mean something that benefits the recipient. It can also be something which detriments the person who provides it. The courts have held that a promise to do something you were not otherwise legally required to do is sufficient consideration. For example, in Hamer v Sidway (1891) 27 NE 256 (new-york-state), the court held that a promise to quit smoking was sufficient consideration. It doesn't matter whether the recipient values the consideration or not. In Chappell (see above) the court held: It is said that when received the wrappers are of no value to Nestle’s. This I would have thought irrelevant. A contracting party can stipulate for what consideration he chooses. A peppercorn does not cease to be good consideration if it is established that the promisee does not like pepper and will throw away the corn. A handshake is almost certainly sufficient consideration because it involves doing something that you were under no legal obligation to do before you agreed the contract. How you write a receipt is a matter of personal choice and therefore off-topic.
This is not legal advice, It is not even primarily a legal opinion. It is a legal position. The lawyer, acting on behalf of the agency from which you requested information, is giving the reasons why that agency is declining your request. The lawyer is presumably either an employee of the agency, or has the agency as a client. In any case, this is notice of the position that the agency would be likely to adopt if you took further legal action, such as a suit to compel disclosure. Lawyers provide such position statements ion behalf of clients or employers all the time. Such statements indicate why certain action is taken, what basis the client or employer has for taking or not taking certain action, and often indicate the nature of the defenses or theories that will be used should a lawsuit follow, although the client or employer is free to change the theory at the pleading stage. Not only is it not unethical for the lawyer to respond in this way, the agency is, I am fairly sure, required by the law to provide a valid reason when a request is declined. That is what they have done, provide a reason that they claim is valid, with some legal reasoning about why it is valid. Note that I express no view on whether the reason given is in fact valid, or would be sustained in a suit. That would be a different question.
Reviewing https://stackexchange.com/legal/trademark-guidance shows the following: The logos associated with Stack Exchange Inc. and any Stack Exchange site are a trademark. The purpose of trademark law is to prevent consumers from being misled as to the origin of a product. So if you were making a product, and you used a Stack Exchange name or logo in your product (or in its advertising) in such a way that would mislead someone into thinking that your product was owned by, operated by, endorsed by, or in any way part of Stack Exchange Inc., you would be violating the trademark and this would not be legal. Our logo images and site names are copyrighted. Any content on the Stack Exchange Network not contributed by users is copyrighted. Copyright is different than trademark. Ordinarily you couldn't copy it. But if you were writing a news story or blog post about a Stack Exchange site, reproducing the logo image would almost certainly be considered &quot;fair use&quot; and allowed under trademark law because you were not using it &quot;in trade.&quot; So the answer to your question is yes, you would need to seek the permission of the trademark holder.
It would be a violation of 18 USC 1001, which is the law against making false statements to the federal government. Paul Mozer, who was a Salomon Brothers trader, received a four month sentence for doing something along those lines in 1994. Bidding on something implies an intent to pay for the thing, which in this case is a falsehood: in so doing, one "falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact" (that you don't intend to pay for the thing).