On 11 Aug, 17:05, Basil Jet wrote:
On 2010\08\11 15:15, Paul Terry wrote:

In message , Basil Jet
writes

On 2010\08\11 14:37, Mike Bristow wrote:
This isn't a problem, because legal tender is not an issue in
day-to-day life. I've never made a transaction for which legal
tender was necessary.

You always pay in advance in restaurants, hairdressers and taxis?

It doesn't matter whether Mike pays in advance or in arrears for such
services. Legal tender is only involved if there is a dispute that goes
to court.

If Mike then pays into court the exact amount due, in legal tender, he
cannot be successfully sued for the debt.

That is the only application of the term legal tender in the UK. Many
people assume it has some wider meaning, but it really doesn't.

So if someone uses a taxi in England and offers nothing but Scottish
money, are they committing an offence, and if so, what is the legal term
to describe the things that can be used to settle the debt to the taxi
driver, namely English notes and British coins?

The situation is quite simple. If you wish to pay for something in
advance, you can come to any agreement with the vendor you like. For
example, many vendors refuse to accept Bank of England £50 notes. You
could pay with a big pile of penny sweets if the vendor chooses to
accept them.

If you have a debt, you can settle it with any form of payment
provided the creditor is prepared to accept it, including the
aforementionned penny sweets. The notion of legal tender has no
bearing on this.

The main reason legal tender law exists is to stop creditors imposing
(contracutally agreed) extra fees for late payment by refusing to
accept payment offered. The best (real) example of this was the
protest some Oxford students made when tuition fees were first
introduced in the late '90s. Having refused to pay them for a couple
of terms, the college said the students would be sent down (expelled)
if they did not pay up. The students all turned up at the college
office with a wheel barrow full of 1000 £1 coins each. As the £1 coin
is legal tender for any amount (throughout the UK), because they had
offered legal tender in settlement of the debt, it would have been
unlawful of the college to send them down (even if the college had
refused to accept the wheelbarrow loads of £1 coins, though in this
case they accepted the payment).

Robin