In last month's post, we highlighted the story of the guy who purchased a vase from an uninformed seller at a Connecticut yard sale for $35. The vase turned out to be from the 15th century Chinese Ming dynasty, and it was auctioned off on March 17 for over $700K. We discussed the contract doctrine of unilateral mistake that gives the seller no recourse and concluded that the application of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you") would lead to a different result.
As brought to my attention by the always informative ContractsProf Blog, it turns out that there's a somewhat similar "windfall" case (i.e., an unexpected financial benefit from getting something that is ostensibly worth little - or nothing) involving the acquirer of someone else's assumed trash who, after applying some good old-fashioned mental elbow-grease, turned it into a treasure. And then applied the Golden Rule.
But where did the Golden Rule come from? In his book After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, respected NDE researcher Bruce Grayson describes the Golden Rule as being enshrined in the world's religions and philosophy for ages:
"Every major religion has some variant of this as one of its basic guidelines. It appears in an ancient Egyptian papyrus from 500 BC, in the writings of the Greek philosophers Sextus and Isocrates, in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, in the books of Matthew and Galatians in the New Testament, in the Babylonian Talmud, in the Muslim Koran, in the Hindu Mahabharata and the Padma Purana, in the Buddhist Udanavarga, in the Jain Sutrakritanga, in the Analects of Confucius, and in the Taoist T'ai-shang Kan-ying P'ien."
(CCB aside: The relationship between the Golden Rule and NDEs is fascinating but beyond the scope of this post. Let's just say that it's better to have practiced the Golden Rule before your NDE.)
Just because you won't see the Golden Rule as part of the Restatement of Contracts doesn't mean that it shouldn't be applied. Which is what happened when they remodeled the famous Chelsea Hotel in New York City in 2018 and threw out its decrepit room doors. As reported by the New York Times, Jim Georgiou, a former Chelsea resident, saw the doors in a trash pile and had an idea. What if he could connect the doors (still bearing their room numbers) with the celebrities who stayed in the rooms over the years, such as Mark Twain, O. Henry, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Tennessee Williams? And Iggy Pop and Bette Davis, who shared Room 126, decades apart? Would the doors then become valuable? So Mr. Georgiou rescued the doors. And after documenting which door was linked to what celebrity, the lot was auctioned off for over $400K. Rather than pocketing the entire sale proceeds for himself, Mr. Georgiou, who was homeless at the time that he salvaged the doors, shared half his windfall with City Harvest, a charity whose mission is to feed hungry New Yorkers.
Of course, unlike the Chinese vase transaction, there was no purchase agreement (offer, acceptance, or consideration) for the Chelsea doors. The hotel developer reasonably thought that they had no value and they didn't - until Mr. Georgiou researched their famous-person connections. But these stories illustrate what someone may do with a windfall. In the Chinese vase account (as far as we know), the unidentified buyer pocketed the entire net auction proceeds, using the doctrine of unilateral mistake to protect his gain. However, with the Chelsea doors, the windfall recipient applied the Golden Rule to benefit a worthy cause. (So whose shoes would you rather be in for your NDE - or DE?)
With a nod to the late musician Ray Manzarek (who likely doesn't mind me repurposing his explanation for picking the name of his iconic band), "in between black-letter contract law and the Golden Rule, there are doors."
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