An agreement conditional on winning a case can be argued both ways by both parties, once the case is about the agreement itself.
Protagoras taught rhetoric to Euathlus on the terms that the fee fell due when the pupil won his first case. Euathlus took no cases, and Protagoras sued for the fee. Each argued that he must win whatever the verdict: if Protagoras wins, the court awards the fee; if he loses, the pupil has won his first case and owes it. The pupil's argument is the mirror image. Aulus Gellius reports that the judges adjourned the case to a distant date.
In practice
- A contract paying a bonus on the first successful project is invoked in a dispute over whether the dispute counts as the project.
- A bet about whether the pair will ever settle the bet.
- Standing
- A self-referential contract rather than a claim about behaviour, and a reminder that a condition defined over its own enforcement does not resolve. Compare Heller's Catch-22.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- The paradoxes of democracy and the quips of partisans