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Do I have a case of Promissory Estoppel
Anonymous14 views2 answers
This happened when my daughter joined a weekly audition for a singing competition.We were told by one of the auditioning judge and quote" she's in". I asked if we need to re-audition but the Judges said no need. We were then told to wait for the details for Finals. I was asked to sign registration papers. We were told to have my daughter sing the same audition song during the Finals. I asked the Judges, if I can still change the song, they had a discussion and eventually said yes, we can change the song. We Waited for 7 weeks. On the the last week, we still did not received any calls. So we called them ourselves only to know that my daughter was not in the Finals.
No, I'm afraid not. Promissory estoppel is a theory used to make a claim when someone has changed their position to their detriment on the basis of someone else's promise, and here, your daughter entered a contest and never had any guaranty of winning and never was able to rely on anything any judge said.
You'd have to review the rules of this competition, but the organizers likely made no promises about anyone or anything, and if your arguments would be "if she would have sung a different song, she would have won the competition ," and/or "one judge said she won," you'd have a very difficult time proving the first argument, and it's likely that one judge wasn't able to make any decisions by themselves about the competition and that the decision-making process of all the judges was a final and unappealable one.
Disclaimer: Please note that this answer does not constitute legal advice, and should not be relied on, since each state has different laws, each situation is fact specific, and it is impossible to evaluate a legal problem without a comprehensive consultation and review of all the facts and documents at issue. This answer does not create an attorney-client relationship.
In addition to Mrs. Koslyn's comments, I'd like to point out that there are no legal requirements for competitions, aside from questions of the legality of the competition itself. If the competition has rules but breaks their rules, there is nothing illegal. The rules of the competition have no legal authority, and thus when they are broken, there is no legal remedy. Just as you can't seek a legal remedy because a baseball player cheated in a game, you can't seek a legal remedy because the organizers did not follow their own competition's rules.
