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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;hontonai, post: 656431, member: 4703&quot;]I&#039;d love to see a citation to a decided case allowing rejection of legal tender <u>in payment of a debt.</u></p><p><br /></p><p>You&#039;re right that there are no laws mandating acceptance of payment in any particular manner when making a purchase, and the constitution is silent on that point.&nbsp; However, once a &quot;debt&quot; is created, the effect of making tender of payment in &quot;legal tender&quot; is to cancel that debt, whether or not the tender is accepted.&nbsp; Since the teenagers were tendering payment of charges that had been previously incurred, they were tendering payment of a &quot;debt&quot;, and had the right to recover their car whether or not the towing company accepted the tender.</p><p><br /></p><p>A comparison I used in 1960s law school contract classes to demonstrate the difference between &quot;debt&quot; and other &quot;obligation to pay&quot; is between MacDonald&#039;s and Denny&#039;s, two well-known restaurant chains. <ul> <li>A MacDonalds customer never owes the company a debt.&nbsp; He/she orders, pays, and only then receives the food.</li> <li>At Denny&#039;s on the other hand, the diner <i>does</i> become a debtor.&nbsp; He/she orders, receives the food thereby becoming indebted, and then pays the bill.</li> </ul><p></p><p>MacDonalds may legally require payment in any form it desires - even buttons can be required.&nbsp; Denny&#039;s cannot place limits on the patron&#039;s manner of payment, without cancellation of the debt.&nbsp; Even the rejection of bills larger than a specified amount would technically have that effect, although the customer could be given the option of paying in smaller bills or waiting a reasonable time for the company to process the payment, and arrange a refund of his/her change.</p><p><br /></p><p>Article 1, §8 of the US Constitution gives Congress the right to &quot;coin money and regulate the value thereof&quot;, and Article 1, §10, clause 1, forbids any State from making &quot;anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts&quot;.&nbsp; In Title 31, §5103 Congress has exercised its sole authority to declare that US coins, <i>in any amount</i> are legal tender for payment of debt.&nbsp; End result:&nbsp; When the teenagers (whether acting wisely or foolishly) tendered $88 in US coins, they expunged their debt and became entitled to possession of their car.&nbsp; If the towing company didn&#039;t want the cents, that&#039;s their option, but retaining possession of the car after that tender constituted conversion in civil court, grand theft auto in criminal court; and any judge in California or elsewhere in the United States would be bound to so determine.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, all of that being said, there are still ramifications I haven&#039;t discussed, and perhaps now it becomes apparent why I have declined on other occasions to go into detail on legal issues.&nbsp; Attorneys are not long winded because they love to hear themselves talk, they are long winded because complex issues can&#039;t be summarized in a few words.</p><p><br /></p><p>BTW:&nbsp; This comment just ain&#039;t so <i>with respect to payment of debt</i>, although the first sentence is quite accurate with respect to other payments:[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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