Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Acct 101

This sounds like a discussion problem from the first week of contracts class in law school, where the subject is the adequacy of consideration, or perhaps week two where the topic is whether there can be a "meeting of the minds" when one or both parties is drunk, or maybe week three where the topic is oral contracts and the statute of frauds.

I think the bargain meets the adequacy of consideration test and is not subject to a statute of frauds defense, i.e. an otherwise-valid oral contract is enforceable.

However, complete intoxication to the point of being unable to comprehend the nature of a purported contract renders one temporarily incompetent to make a contract, and the contract is void. This is true even if the drunkenness was the party's voluntary act. See Guidici v. Guidici, decided by the California Supreme Court in 1935 and reported at 2 Cal.2d 497.

The watch can be recovered in court.