Is this contract valid? Does this contract meet the requirements to be enforced by a court? If not, what challenges might be raised? Promissory Note Principal Amount: £500.00 GBP Date: For value received, the undersigned (the “Promisor”) at _________, promises to pay to the order of _______(the “Promisee”) at ________ the sum of £500 shall the Promisor fail to meet his target of 47.5 work hours per week between 6th - 26th June 2016. Sum shall be paid in full within seven days of the end date of said period. This agreement will be governed and interpreted according to English law. All disputes and claims arising under the Agreement (including non-contractual disputes and claims) will be subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. Promissor (name): Promissor (signature): Date:
Having done a bit of brief research, I find that "legit" is a synonym for "good". So, no. The header announcing a "principal amount" serves no purpose and could be misinterpreted as indicating that there is a loan. There is no reason to indicate the date twice, which gives rise to two different values of "date". The phrase "For value received" can be interpreted in at least two ways, one being "in exchange for some unspecified value to be received at some future date by Promisor", and "in exchange for a specific value already received by Promisor". Under the later interpretation, Promis(s)ee probably could not breach but under the former, Promis(s)ee could. So it makes a difference. You can just pay to the Promis(s)ee, and not imply that you are creating a pay-to-order instrument such as a check. That still leaves you the option to pay with a check. Or was the intent to say "pay on demand"? The expression "the sum of £500 shall the Promisor fail to meet his target" is not grammatical in US English, and I'll leave it to a UK speaker to judge if this is, over there. I assume that this is supposed to express conditionality, in which case "if" is a useful term. Then the meat of the contract, I guess, is that if the Promisor fails to meet somebody's target of 47.5 work hours per week, then Promisor has to pay Promissee £500 (and not otherwise). It's really not clear how anyone would know whether "meet a target of 47.5 work hours per week" has come to pass. Does that mean "work at least 47.5 hours per week"? Does that mean "for each of the three weeks within the time period" (or did you mean "work 47.5 hours within some one week, within the 3 week period"). Being explicit that the work obligation extends for 3 weeks would be legit (vide supra). Supposing that the second clause means "Promisor will pay £500 by 5:00pm 2 July 2016", you should put it that way. Or if you mean "Promisor will pay £500 by 5:00pm 3 July 2016", say that. Deadlines for performance should be stated very directly and clearly, and require no calculation and interpretation. And I'd suggest including a clause stating that "Promissor" and "Promisor" are used interchangeably in this contract. Or else be consistent in spelling. Note that almost any contract can be given some interpretation. From the perspective of creating a contract, the first concern should be over clearly expressing the intentions of the two parties in written form. After all, you don't have a contract if there is no meeting of the minds.
Give the contract language now included in the question, it seems that payment is not due until after the invoice is submitted. I don't see any obligation on the homeowner's part to prompt the contractor to submit the invoice, nor to pay until it is submitted. It might be well to keep a sum reserved so that a late invoice will not find the homeowner with a cash flow problem leading to a default, which could allow the contractor to claim damages or file a lien. But I don't see how a lien can be field before the invoice is delivered, because the payment is not due until 30 days after the invoice date, and no lien can be field until payment is overdue. It seems that the warranty on the work is not in effect until after final payment is made. If there is any reason to consider a warranty claim, it might be desirable to get and pay the invoice.
Is the agreement made by the seller binding? Yes. You &quot;secured&quot; reimbursement of 90% of what you paid and de facto waived your entitlement to the remaining 10%. Prior to that signing the agreement, you were entitled to be fully reimbursed regardless of how long it takes for the counterparty to sell the car to someone else. Depending on the exact terms of the agreement, the counterparty might have the meritorious argument that your waiver is in exchange for a &quot;timely&quot; (i.e., two week) reimbursement of at least 90% of your payment.
The site that you provide is explaining basics of contract law, and that quote attempts to explicate (and they refer to) the Latin maxim consensus ad idem, generally explained in modern language as &quot;meeting of the minds&quot;. Here is a brief overview of that legal concept. The basis idea is that the parties are talking about the same thing. An example of a lack of meeting of the minds is here, where a complainant agreed to withdraw a complaint in exchange for a service pin plus &quot;any/all straight time compensation&quot; lost. It was later established that the complainant believed that this included time off from work on sick leave, but the agency held that this had already been compensated – thus the parties did not agree to what was &quot;compensation lost&quot;. The &quot;agreement&quot; was thus found to be void, because the parties did not in fact agree on the meaning of the terms. Your purported example would not indicate a lack of meeting of the minds, though it might indicate fraud. A lack of meeting of the minds could arise if the seller intended objects A, C to be items on offer but the buyer believed objects A, B, D to be the offer. It should be noted that the law does not let a person get out of a contract simply by declaring &quot;I thought that...&quot;, the courts will look at the objective evidence as to what the parties did believe.
Let's analyse the landlord's claims: You have an assured shorthold tenancy agreement. The fact that there isn't a written contract doesn't change this as a verbal agreement is legally binding. That's true. A tenancy exists even if this was never written down, and it's an AST by default if the requirements for being one are met. Payment of rent constitutes acceptance of these terms. Payment of rent by the tenant, and its acceptance by the landlord, is sufficient for a tenancy to be regarded as existing. The tenancy can only be terminated early from the permission of the landlord. That's rubbish. A tenant can always end a tenancy, but there may be restrictions. In particular, a tenant cannot end a tenancy before the end of a fixed term without the agreement of the landlord, but the landlord has an obligation to find new tenants if this happens. However, I've been unable to find any information as to whether a fixed term exists if there's no written agreement. Assuming there is no fixed term, then for a month-to-month tenancy, the tenant must provide one month's notice to end the tenancy, with that month ending at the end of a rental period (i.e. the day before the next payment would be due). If you leave early this is legally abandonment and you are still responsible for paying rent for the duration of the tenancy That's true. ... if you do leave next month I'll consider you in rent arrears and pursue payment through legal means That is possible - but if you give notice as described above, then the tenancy will end, and (assuming you're up to date with the rent) you'll no longer be liable.
If I did not sign promotion bonus document, my career would be over. Is this duress? No. The premise is hardly true or even logical, and what you describe falls short of duress. Not every imbalance of bargain power implies duress. First, it seems that you could have declined the bonus, thereby preempting the sanction/remedy for leaving within 12 months. Second, it seems hard to prove (and unrealistic) that your career would have been over if you refused to sign the document. The employer can easily refute that allegation by pointing out that there are many others who did not sign that employer's document and yet work elsewhere as investment bankers. You would need certain, additional context to reasonably allow for a conclusion that your career altogether depends on what happens with this single entity. Third, your mention that "the bonus mitigates the horrendous weekly hours" reinforces the idea that signing the document was your preference (namely, for the purpose of obtaining some additional, non-compulsory stimulus) rather than employer-inflicted duress. The rationale and decision for acceptance of those conditions reflects that you knowingly exercised your freedom of contract. A party is not entitled to void a contract only because he belatedly changed his mind about conditions of which he was aware beforehand.
English common law has centuries of experience on this issue, and has developed some settled principles that are applied by the courts. Prior to 1925, references in contracts to months were interpreted as lunar months. There are 13 lunar months in a year. By section 61 of the Law of Property Act 1925, references in contracts to months are to be interpreted as calendar months, unless the context otherwise requires. Calendar months are counted from a specified date. It is not necessary to consider the period from the 1st of a month to, say, 31st (unless the notice period starts on 1st of a month). This contrasts with the usual understanding of calendar year, which tends to be thought of as the period from 1st January to 31st December. The “corresponding date rule” requires that one looks at the same date in the diary the relevant number of months ahead. Thus a period of 3 months from 20th April expires on 20th July. In the case of Dodds v Walker [1980] 1 WLR 1061, in the Court of Appeal, Templeman LJ said: "…if an act is authorised to be performed on any arbitrary day in any month of the year, then one month elapses on the corresponding day of the next month, provided that the day of the act itself is excluded from computation." In the same case, in the House of Lords, Lord Diplock said: "The corresponding date rule is simple. It is easy of application. …all that the calculator has to do is make in his diary the corresponding date in the appropriate subsequent month." In the same case, Templeman LJ clarified that if the period expired on a date that did not exist in a particular month (eg 31st February), then the period would expire on the last day of that month. Source
Do you have a contract? It depends on the website’s terms but almost certainly not. It is standard practice in e-commerce terms and conditions that your selecting “buy” and giving the vendor money does not create a contract; you are merely making an offer that the vendor can accept or reject. For example, Amazon’s terms are clear that the contract only comes into existence when they dispatch the goods, until then they are free to cancel your order and return your money. Here the vendor rejected the offer. Is this false advertising? Maybe. It would depend on the specifics of the ad and whether, overall, a reasonable person would be mislead or deceived. It’s possible you misunderstood but that doesn’t necessarily make it misleading or deceptive. I misunderstand a lot of things; that doesn’t mean they were objectively misleading or deceptive. Notwithstanding, a business does not have to make good on false advertising. An incorrect advertised price does not force the business to anccept offers of that price. It may force a correction and may require the item to not be sold until the price is corrected and it may expose the business to fines, but it does not give anyone the right to buy at that price.