This matter is before me on the Defendants’ motions to dismiss a complaint sounding in contract, filed by the Plaintiff, Mr. Alfred, pro se. That Complaint is remarkable. It is in my experience a unique example of the pleader’s art. It cites to the epic of Gilgamesh, Woody Guthrie, the Declaration of Independence, Noah and The Great Flood, Game of Thrones, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek, President Obama, and Euclid’s proof of the Infinity of Primes, among other references. It is well-written and compelling. In fact, it can be faulted only for a single—but significant—shortcoming: it fails to state a claim on which relief could be granted. Therefore, I grant the Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss.
-Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III, in Joseph Alfred v. Walt Disney Co., et al. Civil Action No. 10211-VCG (Jan. 14, 2015).
Chancery Daily called it "the greatest complaint ever filed." The complaint itself, as the Vice Chancellor noted, is a truly remarkable piece of legal writing. “If the Plaintiff needed to sum up this entire case in one sentence," wrote Mr. Alfred in Paragraph 1 of his Complaint, "it is this: Two executives of the Disney Company are stalling the next evolution of human transportation on this planet.”
Plaintiff contacted Disney to ask for its assistance with promoting a flying care that he purported to be developing, which promotion was to coincide with promotional efforts related to the upcoming release of Star Wars VII. At its heart the complaint contained a somewhat serious argument: that by taking an unsolicited phone call (and thereby allegedly violating their own policy) Disney unwittingly created an expectation, and thereby an implied contract:
The Plaintiff first argues that a contract exists that may be implied in fact based on Disney agreeing to relax its policy not to consider unsolicited proposals. According to the Plaintiff, this contract arose when Disney agreed to hear his proposal. But in order to infer a contract from the behavior of the parties, I must be able to conclude that the requisites of a contract have been met. That behavior “is evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable person, considering all of the attendant circumstances.”
A contract requires an offer, acceptance of the offer, and consideration passing between the parties. There are simply no allegations in the Complaint from which I can infer that Disney agreed to do anything, let alone what the terms of that “anything” might have been. At most, the Complaint alleges that Disney, contrary to its usual policy against accepting unsolicited proposals, attended a telephone conference at which the Plaintiff could pitch his ideas, which the Company then rejected. That does not state a contractual claim. The Plaintiff also argues that he is entitled to relief under a theory of promissory estoppel. Promissory estoppel requires that the defendant make a promise, that the promisor expected action by the promisee in reliance, that the promisee acted to his detriment in reasonable reliance, and that equity requires relief. The “promise” that Plaintiff points to is Disney’s willingness to hear his proposal. In reliance on that willingness, the Plaintiff sent Disney a slide deck to describe the promotion and licensing that he wanted from Disney. If Disney’s promise was to give the Plaintiff’s ideas an airing, despite its prior policy not to consider unsolicited proposals, they complied with that promise. The promise to hear a proposal out, however, cannot be reasonably relied upon as a promise to consummate a contract. There is simply no basis for the imposition of relief under a rubric of promissory estoppel.
Alfred, op. p. 10-11 (citations omitted). The Vice Chancellor manages to get in a dig at Disney and its history with flying cars:
At oral argument on the Motion to Expedite, the Plaintiff argued that the Disney relationship with the Flying Car was even more crucial because the movie Back to the Future Part II (Universal Pictures 1989), set in 2015, also featured flying cars. In this regard, I note that Disney has been tantalizing the public with depictions of flying cars, at the same time failing to promote those vehicles’ actual production as functioning transportation, since at least the time of my long-ago boyhood. See, e.g., Charles Spain Verral, Walt Disney’s The Flying Car (Golden Press, 1961), Ex. A, attached; The Absent-Minded Professor (Walt Disney Prods. 1961).
Alfred, op. p. 3 n. 6. The opinion, the entirety of which is well worth reading both for amusement value and for its legal analysis, ends on a kinder note to the Plaintiff than many judges might have offered:
Robert Fulton was laughed at by his peers, as was Secretary Seward. Galileo faced the inquisition for promoting heliocentric theory. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring caused a riot when first played. The Impressionists’ early work was considered unsalable, and Van Gogh “suffered for [his] sanity.” Plaintiff and his vision of a vertical take-off and landing flying vehicle—which vehicle would revolutionize transportation and save lives and resources—as well as his marketing plan to achieve economies of scale by generating demand through a tie-in to a similar vehicle made popular via cinema, may be of this ilk. If so, the Plaintiff should persevere; it reportedly took Edison over a thousand attempts to create the light bulb before he struck upon the carbon filament.
Alfred, op. p. 12.