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Legal Phrase Confusion I'm putting together my model release form and I have a question regarding some of the legal terminology. Does anyone know what is meant by: "For the good and valuable consideration, receipt of which is hereby acknowledged"
Elaine
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Mark Feldstein |
Greetings Elaine: It's basic hornbook law that to have a valid contract, the fundamentals of contract law require three things: A valid offer, valid acceptance communicated back to the offeror; and sufficient consideration. Consideration is something of value. It could be anything. Arthur Miller of Harvard Law School, once described sufficient consideration as "a peppercorn" so long as it had some value to the parties to the agreement. That's a long-winded way of saying "for good and valuable consideration" means exchanging something of value from the offeror (in this cases, the photographer) to the subject/model (the offeree). In most cases, it's a buck, or a print, something of value. Courts generally refuse to tamper with how much consideration is adequate for a particular bargain. BUT, in some rare situations, they may decide a contract fails for insufficient consideration. Let's say you photograph someone, pay them a buck to sign a model release knowing you're going to sell the image to General Motors for a million bucks. Is that sufficient consideration to the model? If they sue and allege it isn't, depending on a whole host of circumstances, a court might agree with them and say it wasn't. But in most instances, a dollar is considered "good and valuable" and thus fair consideration for entry into a contract (between adults 18 years of age or older). If you want to take a look in detail at the subject of consideration and bargained for exchanges see "Corbin on Contracts" or "Contract Law" by Farnsworth or even Black's Law Dictionary Available in just about any law library, even some public ones. Take it light and remember...this isn't legal advice, just definitional based on fundamental principles of contract law. ;>)
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Mark Feldstein |
BTW, rather than reinventing the "release wheel" so-to-speak, why not just get a Photographers business practices book with forms on CD. Those forms can be customized but for most situations, they're pretty straightforward. You want to avoid running into shallow water by writing your own forms. If you do, I recommend taking them to a local lawyer to have them make sure that in their opinion, the agreements appear binding and enforceable for you. M.
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