Promise to Pay for Law School is Enforceable
A Minnesota man who promised to pay for a neighbor to attend law school must ante up, a state appeals court has ruled.
Walter Fields is required to honor his admitted promise and pay for Marjorie Conrad’s legal education, ruled the Minnesota Court of Appeals, upholding an $87,000 trial court judgment, reports Minnesota Lawyer (sub. req.), relying on information from Dolan Media Newswires.
The appeals court explains in a written unpublished opinion that it applied a promissory estoppel theory and determined that Conrad reasonably relied on Fields’ promise, knowing that he had made tuition payments for others. Conrad, who testified that she would not otherwise have felt she could afford to go to law school, quit a $45,000-per-year job to do so. Fields made one payments of $1,949.75 when she started law school in 2001, but then told Conrad he could no longer afford to cover her education costs.
At trial, Fields contended he owed Conrad nothing because she earned a valuable law degree and hence suffered no detrimental reliance. “But receiving a law degree was the expected and intended consequence of appellant’s promise, and the essence of appellant’s promise was that respondent would receive the law degree without the debt associated with attending law school,” the opinion states. “Although respondent benefited from attending law school, the debt that she incurred in reliance on appellant’s promise is a detriment to her.”
Fields attended Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., before transferring to William Mitchell College of Law, also in St. Paul, from which she graduated, according to Minnesota Lawyer.
