Would you follow through and pay? Brady's last TD

[Smarti5051]

Let's face it, by the time a judge would be ruling on any contract claim surrounding this auction, it will be known one way or the other whether this was indeed the final touchdown pass of Brady's career. It if is not, then the buyer did not get what he bargained for, nor what was expressly represented in the auction. All parties, if answering truthfully, reasonably assumed Tom Brady was retired from the NFL and that he would not be credited with any future touchdowns in the NFL. There were no disclaimers that Tom Brady might return in the future and diminish the historical significance of the item. It is what makes the ball historic and why the ball went for over $500K. Now, maybe there were bidders that didn't bid because they thought Brady might return to the NFL, but I bet the buyer would declare under oath he believed, as Leland had represented, Tom Brady was permanently retired and that fact was material to his bid. And, it would be hard to rebut, because NOBODY who reasonably believed there was a likelihood that Brady would return would have bid $500K on that ball.

It boils down to this: Did all parties to the transaction believe what was being sold was the "historic" final touchdown football at the time the contract was formed? Yes. Is the football, in fact, the "historic" final touchdown football (assuming for the sake of argument he eventually throws another touchdown)? No. So, there was no meeting of the minds as to the what was being purchased, and no contract was formed.

I will use a recent example in the sportscard world: A guy spends $3.1 Million for an unopened case of Pokemon cards. The general public believes the case is authentic and unopened (though there were a few skeptics). The buyer, seller and auction house all enter into the contract believing the case is an unopened case of Pokemon cards. In fact, the case is later opened, and the box is now what all parties believed it to be, as it did not contain Pokemon cards, rather it was full of GI Joe cards. Thus, even though the box that was bid on was the exact box delivered to the buyer, it was not what the parties understood and represented it to be. The collecting public seemed to uniformly agree that the buyer did not get what was contracted for and was entitled to his money back. Yet here, though it is undisputed the buyer did not get what he bargained for, the jury seems pretty split on whether he should be stuck paying for something different then what he contracted for.