Introduction
Jarrad is employed in his father’s shop. He is charged with a number of roles in the shop. Among the roles is cleaning of the shop. Jarrad has been carrying out the cleaning though his employer feels the shop is always dirty. Duncan doesn’t like the dirty state of the shop and he is not pleased by the fact that Jarrad is employed to keep the shop clean as part of his duties yet he doesn’t seem to adequately perform it. To enable Jarrad work harder, Duncan made a proposal to Jarrad to give Jarrad an additional £ 30 every week to motivate him into conducting his duties effectively. Jarrad accepted the offer and improved the cleanliness of the shop but Duncan refused to pay him claiming that it was part of the initial agreement to clean the shop.
Rule of Law
This is a case involving domestic issue and therefore the best approach for such a case is examining similar cases. It is worth noting that a contract must be legally binding for it to be valid (Beale, 2002, p. 1). In references to domestic issues, which touches on agreements between/among family members, there factors which ought to be taken into consideration as most of the agreements are normally not treated as enforceable.
Arguments have been made that most of the promises which are made at the family level are mainly meant for relating purpose and turning them into being legally enforceable would may lead family members being “very careful” with their utterances as they may fear that the word they say may be turned against them (Klabbers, 1996, p. 116). It has been argued that when considering issues touching on family issues, courts will try to identify whether there was any intention to create a contract; this was seen in the case of Balfour v Balfour (1919), (Young, 2010, p. 56) as it was established that Mr. Balfour had no intention of creating a contract by promising his wife some monthly disbursement.
It is worth noting that that in case a contract exists then for the consideration for the same considerations to be changed, the conditions of the contract would have changed “significantly” as was seen in the case of Hartley v Ponsonby [1857] 26 LJ QB 322 (O’Sullivan and Hilliard, 2005, p. 681) where so many members of the working team left such that those who were left would clearly not discharge their services securely.
Application
There are basic facts which have been established above in relation to case such the one in this case study. The case study involves a domestic issue. Taking the precedent of cases such as that of Balfour v Balfour (1919) (Koffman and Macdonald, 2007, 98) and Jones v Padavatton [1968] (Salzedy, 1999, p. 36) promises made on domestic grounds are not legally binding (O’Riordan, 2003, p. 58). However, it may be argued that despite the case involving two people who are related there was contract between the two and therefore the matter should not played down on domestic grounds.
In such a case it can be shown that the contract was to be carried out in the original terms as we do not see any alternations in the contract terms that can be viewed as significant to necessitate the change of the consideration terms as was seen in the case Hartley v Ponsonby [1857] 26 LJ QB 322 (Diamond, 1964, p. 318) whereby the reduction in the members of the team made it hard for the remaining crew to carry out the duties which were to done with the assistance of the other members who were absent. There were no changes which significantly increased the dirt of the shop beyond the abilities of Jarrad to carry out the cleaning or rather carry it out significantly.
Conclusion
Jarrad is in contract with his father to carry out cleaning in the shop. Jarrad does not seem to carry out his duties as expected prompting his father to promise him some extra money if he could perform his duties as expected. As much as this can be treated as a domestic issue it should also be clear that there is no reason as to why Jarrad should be paid more since he is just carrying out what is expected of him. In the case study there are no incidences of terms changing which could the carrying out of cleaning duties hard for him; the status quo has been maintained in regard to the process of carrying out his duties only that he is intentional or for some other reason not carrying out his duties as expected of him and therefore he is entitled to any extra amount.
References
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Koffman, L and Macdonald, E. (2007) The Law of Contract. New York: Prentice Hall.
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