A New Zealand woman has sued her long-time boyfriend in the Disputes Tribunal, alleging that he breached an “oral contract” by failing to pick her up from the airport, causing her to miss her flight to a concert and forcing her to delay her trip by a day.
The woman told New Zealand’s Disputes Tribunal that she had been in a relationship with the man for six and a half years before they began to have differences.
According to the court order, Released Thursday The woman, whose name has been withheld, had been planning to go to a concert with some friends, and her boyfriend had driven her to the airport and offered to stay at her house and look after her two dogs while she was away.
She had messaged him the previous day, asking him to pick her up between 10:00 and 10:15 a.m., but he never showed up and the woman missed her flight.
The woman said this resulted in a number of expenses, including travel for the next day, shuttle fees to the airport and the cost of kenneling her dog.
She also claimed she should be reimbursed for the cost of ferry tickets she and her boyfriend paid for to take holidays to visit their sons at different times.
The woman testified that she had a “verbal agreement” with her partner that he would drive her to the airport and look after her dog.
She claimed the man had looked after her dogs in the past and “enjoyed staying at her house.”
But arbitration tribunal judge Kristia Cowie said there needed to be an intention to create a “legally binding relationship” for the agreement to be enforceable.
“Partners, friends and colleagues make social arrangements that are unlikely to be legally enforceable unless the parties take actions that demonstrate their intention to keep their promises,” she writes.
“When a friend breaks a promise, the other party may suffer economic loss, but that loss may not be compensated.”
“There are many examples of friends disappointing friends, but courts have held that unless the promise goes beyond goodwill between friends and becomes a promise intended to be kept, it is an irreparable loss.”
Justice Cowie found that the nature of the promise was “exchanged as a normal part of an intimate relationship” and there was “nothing to indicate an intention between the parties” that the woman’s boyfriend would be bound by it.
“The parties have not taken any steps to demonstrate their intent to separate the agreement from a friendship agreement and to create a legally binding outcome,” she wrote.
“Promises are made but not contracts. This is part of the agreement of everyday family and domestic relationships and cannot be enforced in a disputes court.”
The boyfriend sent an email saying he would not attend the hearing and did not respond to follow-up calls from the judge, according to the order.
The claim was dismissed.
