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Milton Polinger pledged $200,000 as a charitable subscription to the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Washington, Inc. (UJA). The pledge was not for a specific purpose and was not made in consideration of pledges by others, and UJA borrowed no money against this pledge. The pledge was to the UJA generally and to the Israel Emergency Fund. After paying $76,500 toward the pledge, Polinger died and the Maryland National Bank was appointed representative of the Polinger estate. The UJA filed a claim against the estate for the balance of $133,500. The bank, however, denied the claim alleging that the promise was unenforceable for lack of consideration. Who wins?

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I'm going to go with the bank as well. A possible prommisory estoppel defense could be raised, but in our cases charitable promises were typically only enforced when the school named a building after the donor or something along those lines.

I would also say the bank. It doesn't seem that the charity relied on the pledge to their detriment, and that enforcing the promise would be necessary to avoid injustice, so I don't think promissory estoppel would work.

thedive wrote:I would also say the bank. It doesn't seem that the charity relied on the pledge to their detriment, and that enforcing the promise would be necessary to avoid injustice, so I don't think promissory estoppel would work.

As we were taught...RS (2d) §90(2) holds that detrimental reliance is not required for charitable donations (for policy reasons...however other policy reasons may prevent charities for suing to enforce every broken promise). There was the 'Dozo case with the donation to the school, but that was under the first restatement. Just my .02 on the subject.

x7227 wrote:

thedive wrote:I would also say the bank. It doesn't seem that the charity relied on the pledge to their detriment, and that enforcing the promise would be necessary to avoid injustice, so I don't think promissory estoppel would work.

As we were taught...RS (2d) §90(2) holds that detrimental reliance is not required for charitable donations (for policy reasons...however other policy reasons may prevent charities for suing to enforce every broken promise). There was the 'Dozo case with the donation to the school, but that was under the first restatement. Just my .02 on the subject.

I would mention this but add that R2d90 is not widely adopted.

AlexanderSupertramp wrote:

x7227 wrote:

thedive wrote:I would also say the bank. It doesn't seem that the charity relied on the pledge to their detriment, and that enforcing the promise would be necessary to avoid injustice, so I don't think promissory estoppel would work.

As we were taught...RS (2d) §90(2) holds that detrimental reliance is not required for charitable donations (for policy reasons...however other policy reasons may prevent charities for suing to enforce every broken promise). There was the 'Dozo case with the donation to the school, but that was under the first restatement. Just my .02 on the subject.

I would mention this but add that R2d90 is not widely adopted.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I read the specific case OP is referring to, and in that case the bank won because that part of the restatement wasn't adopted.

that sounds like a similar fact pattern to DeLeo - promise was ruled unenforceable

http://www.lawnix.com/cases/kadimah-deleo.html

There's special policy considerations about charitable promises when the promisor dies too. I'd make sure to talk about those in answering this question. My class went over this on the case where the aunt promises the kid 3000 dollars and dies.

Argue both sides.

LeDique wrote:There's special policy considerations about charitable promises when the promisor dies too. I'd make sure to talk about those in answering this question. My class went over this on the case where the aunt promises the kid 3000 dollars and dies.

Dougherty. But see Feinberg v. Pfeiffer.