Dementas vs. the Estate of Tallas, 764 p.2d 628
- Procedural History: The Trial Court passed the verdict that Defendant (Tallas) was not guilty and dismissed Plaintiff’s claim against Defendant. After Plaintiff appealed so that his claim against Tallas could be dismissed, the Supreme Court of Utah affirmed that the case of Dementas vs. the Estate of Tallas was solved in the favor of Dementas (Gallo, 2008, p. 56).
- Facts: In the case of Dementas vs. the Estate of Tallas, the unsatisfied claim of Peter Dementas is told. After helping an emigrant from Greece, Jack Tallas, for years, and hoping to inherit the latter’s property for the offered help after Tallas passed away, the plaintiff failed to obtain the Tallas Estate, since Jack Tallas did not change his will consequently, only dictating a memorandum to Dementas.
- Issue: It is important to mark that in the given case, the major issue concerned the lawfulness of the contract, which was written in Greek and did not fully respond to the claims that the U. S. laws lay to the wills of the kind.
- Holding/Decision: According to the Court decision, Dementas’s claim that the diseased promised to pay the Plaintiff $50,000 was inconsistent, since the request to pay the above-mentioned $50,000 was based on the past consideration, i.e., “a benefit that one party has already received at the time he made his promise” (Burnham & Kraynak, 2011, p. 53) and, therefore, could not be referred to as the valid and lawful demand.
- Rule: It is obvious that in the given case, the court obviously refers to the given case as the instance of a returned rule. According to the Court decision, A generally accepted definition of consideration is that a legal detriment has been bargained for and exchanged for a promise. The mere fact that one man promises something to another creates no legal duty and makes no legal remedy available in case of nonperformance. A performance or a returned promise must be bargained for. (Beatty & Samuelson, 2006, p. 262)
- Reasoning: Since there has been no contract signed and no written agreement made whatsoever, the given promise of offering an inheritance to the third party cannot be considered a valid decision and, therefore, is not to be performed. Even though the given case might fall under the laws of moral obligation, the latter is not accepted in the State of Utah, as Casenote Legal Briefs (2009, p. 26) explains.
- Disposition: It must be admitted that, because of the absence of any written evidence that allows suggesting that the Estate of Tallas could be the inheritance that Tallas left Dementas for the latter’s assistance, the court’s final disposition was to claim the contract unenforceable.
- Dissent/Concurrence: Obviously, the concurrence of Defendant has not been proven in the given case, which means that Plaintiff has no right to claim for the inheritance, even though the diseased might have given Plaintiff the hope to inherit the property.
- Comments: Since Tallas’s promise to give Dementas the estate after the former passes away has not been written according to the U. S. laws and, therefore, cannot be considered as valid proof, there can be no possible way for Dementas to prove his right to claim for the property.
Reference List
Beatty, J. F., & Samuelson, S. (2006). Business Law and the Legal Environment. Stamford, CN: Cengage Learning.
Burnham, S. J., & Kraynak, J. (2011). Contract Law for dummies. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Casenote Legal Briefs (2009). Casenote legal briefs: Contracts, keyed to Ayres and Speidel’s studies in Contract Law. 7th ed., Alphen aan del Rijn, Netherlands: Aspen.
Gallo, N. R. (2008). Elder Law. Stamford, CN: Cengage Learning.