Consideration · Oct 14
Premise. You represent a small-business owner who has received an oral promise from a major supplier: a five-year exclusive arrangement at twenty percent below standard wholesale rates. Your client has begun warehouse renovations costing $42,000. The supplier now says the price was preliminary and will not be honored.
Your task. Draft a one-page demand letter that (1) names the legal theory under which the promise is enforceable, (2) walks the four R2d § 90 elements against the facts, and (3) demands a specific remedy with a dollar amount and doctrinal basis.
Mode. Instructor discretion: 45-min in-class workshop, or one-week take-home, or skip. Counts toward Class Participation.
What this lab teaches. The four R2d § 90 elements (clear promise, foreseeable reliance, actual reliance, injustice avoidable only by enforcement). The choice between reliance and expectation damages once promissory estoppel is established. Professional letter-form discipline.
Back to the regular sequence.
The promissory-estoppel demand letter you drafted today is the doctrinal payoff of Ricketts v. Scothorn and Conrad v. Fields. Next class returns to Module II, Consideration, and adds the doctrinal frame within which § 90 sits as the equitable safety valve.