Category: Contract

In a popular South African cozy crime tv series, one character transfers her interest in a house to another in exchange a fridge magnet (memories associated with the magnet feature here; the exchange is in this episode, available here; and we shall pass over the legal plot holes in the series). This is a nice update on the traditional peppercorn consideration.

William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (vol 2, 1769) 440, noted that, “in case of leases, always reserving a rent, though it be but a peppercorn … [such] considerations will … convert the gift … into a contract” (emphasis added). As Dr Damian O’Reilly explains “… during the 14th century … the Worshipful Company of Grocers [official site | wikipedia] – a charitable and ceremonial organisation in London – … used pepper as a payment mechanism and this is the origin of a ‘peppercorn rent’” (see Dunnes Stores UnLtd Company v Dafora UnLtd Company [2022] IEHC 342 (03 June 2022) [101] (Sanfey J); [2024] IECA 37 (16 February 2024) [58] (Haugton J; Noonan and Butler JJ concurring)).

Hence, in Chappell & Co Ltd v Nestle Co Ltd [1960] AC 87, 114 [1959] UKHL 1 (18 June 1959) [11] Lord Somervell of Harrow considered that chocolate wrappers submitted to Nestlé to redeem musical records were part of the consideration for the records (emphasis added):

It is said that when received the wrappers are of no value to Nestlé’s.

Pictured left is 1 Laveta Place, Nyack, New York, NY 10960, a charming riverfront home at the end of a pretty tree-lined cul de sac in an historic village north of New York city. It has recently been put up for sale (realtor; more information). Even accounting for the almost $2m price tag, this would be an unexceptionable sale of a circa-1890 Queen Anne Victorian with panoramic views over the Hudson River, were it not for the property’s central role in Stambovsky v Ackley 572 NYS 2d 672 (NY App Div 1991) (pdf) (blogged here). It has five bedrooms, four bathrooms … and three poltergeists – but when its owner, Helen Ackley, put it up for sale in 1989, she failed to tell buyer Jeffrey Stambovsky about that last detail. The story of the house is extensively told here and here; the defendant, Helen Ackley, is pictured here; and, in an article entitled “Our Haunted House on the Hudson” in the Reader’s Digest for May 1977 (extracted here), she described her family’s experiences of hauntings in the house. Given that she had sought this notoriety, when she later came to sell the house to Stambovsky, she was precluded from denying that it was haunted; and, in the words of Rubin J for the majority in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York (in a ghost-pun-laden decision), it followed that “as a matter of law, the house is haunted” (there is legal analysis here and here).…