and that they paid her according to the same terms
Note that Chloe was not paid her stipend monthly. She was paid one sum of $5,500 at the very end of her employment with Nonlinear (according to Nonlinear she was supposed to pay herself as she was in charge of payroll and chose not to do so). So it looks like she did not implicitly accept payment of $1000/mo throughout her employment.
I totally agree that there still could have been a more implicit contract that was established via a mixture of the written contract, informal and verbal communication, but I think we have less evidence about the details of that verbal communication (we have some, and I appreciate the transcript and text messages that Nonlinear has shared).
I concur with @ymeskhout and overall recommend more wariness when speaking about legal principles. The timing of pay, particularly if they willingly withheld any, would be material if she raised a contract dispute in court, but given her apparent control over that timing and her ultimate acceptance of the pay is unlikely to have much weight in anything as things stand, and doesn’t really raise fairness concerns unless she asked for the stipend earlier and got rebuffed.
An “implicit contract that was established via a mixture of the written contract and verbal communication” isn’t really a thing the way you’re conceptualizing it—generally speaking, verbal communication before a written contract just isn’t particularly important.
Verbal or informal communication before a signed contract isn’t particularly important. Informal or verbal communication absolutely matters for determining the validity of an unsigned contract.
But also, as I said below (and now in a footnote) I was not trying make a legal argument (indeed, I don’t even know in what jurisdiction this whole situation was happening). I was trying to make an argument on common-sense ethics ground and norms of reasonable conduct. Sorry for the ambiguity.
It is a totally normal term, yes, just not one that was germane to the question at hand.
In terms of making a legal versus ethical argument, I think contracts should be seen primarily as legal tools to settle disputes, such that talking about “valid” contracts outside the legal sense is not particularly useful.
Note that Chloe was not paid her stipend monthly. She was paid one sum of $5,500 at the very end of her employment with Nonlinear (according to Nonlinear she was supposed to pay herself as she was in charge of payroll and chose not to do so). So it looks like she did not implicitly accept payment of $1000/mo throughout her employment.
I totally agree that there still could have been a more implicit contract that was established via a mixture of the written contract, informal and verbal communication, but I think we have less evidence about the details of that verbal communication (we have some, and I appreciate the transcript and text messages that Nonlinear has shared).
I concur with @ymeskhout and overall recommend more wariness when speaking about legal principles. The timing of pay, particularly if they willingly withheld any, would be material if she raised a contract dispute in court, but given her apparent control over that timing and her ultimate acceptance of the pay is unlikely to have much weight in anything as things stand, and doesn’t really raise fairness concerns unless she asked for the stipend earlier and got rebuffed.
An “implicit contract that was established via a mixture of the written contract and verbal communication” isn’t really a thing the way you’re conceptualizing it—generally speaking, verbal communication before a written contract just isn’t particularly important.
Verbal or informal communication before a signed contract isn’t particularly important. Informal or verbal communication absolutely matters for determining the validity of an unsigned contract.
Also, “implied/implicit contract” is a totally normal term: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/implied_contract
But also, as I said below (and now in a footnote) I was not trying make a legal argument (indeed, I don’t even know in what jurisdiction this whole situation was happening). I was trying to make an argument on common-sense ethics ground and norms of reasonable conduct. Sorry for the ambiguity.
It is a totally normal term, yes, just not one that was germane to the question at hand.
In terms of making a legal versus ethical argument, I think contracts should be seen primarily as legal tools to settle disputes, such that talking about “valid” contracts outside the legal sense is not particularly useful.