Does a promise to furnish a house and land to cultivate, made to a promisee who relocated sixty miles to the promisor's land, constitute a gratuitous promise unenforceable for lack of consideration?

The defendant made a promise to the plaintiff, to furnish her with a house and land to cultivate until she could raise her family. In reliance on that promise, the plaintiff gave up her existing home and moved a distance of sixty miles to the defendant's property. She sustained loss and inconvenience in breaking up her household and relocating. The defendant failed to honor the promise to provide her with the house and land. The plaintiff then sued for breach of the promise.

The plaintiff brought an action for breach of the defendant's promise in the court below, and judgment was entered in her favor. The defendant appealed to the Supreme Court of Alabama. The Supreme Court of Alabama reversed the judgment of the court below pursuant to the agreement of the parties.

(Ormond, J.)

No. The majority concluded that the defendant's promise was a mere gratuity and that an action will not lie for its breach. The opinion gives no further reasoning for the majority's view.

Accordingly, the judgment of the court below was reversed, pursuant to the agreement of the parties.

Own view (Ormond, J., writing for the court) Ormond wrote the court's only opinion. His own inclination was that the loss and inconvenience the plaintiff sustained in breaking up her household and moving sixty miles to the defendant's land was a sufficient consideration to support the promise to furnish her a house and land to cultivate until she could raise her family. His brothers, however, thought the promise a mere gratuity, so he announced that the judgment below must be reversed, pursuant to the agreement of the parties.