Jilted bride sues

Lifestyle Relationships
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http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40821215/ns/today-today_people/?gt1=43001

Short story–bride to be spent thousands and thousands of dollars on her wedding, only for her fiance to back out just a few days prior to the wedding. now she’s fighting back by suing him for the financial and emotional distress.

What do you guys think? Does she have the right to do that? If a marriage is called off by one party, does the other party have the right to sue the other for doing so? :hmmm:

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Re: Jilted bride sues

Jo bhi hai… serves him right! :hehe:

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Re: Jilted bride sues

Totally reasonable for her to sue. She's not the first to sue for breach of promise - it's just like breach of contract. But for her fiance promise to marry her, she would never have spent that money. So she's out money. Added to that, there's the embarrasment he caused - he knew he didn't want to marry her, yet he let her continue to spend money and plan her wedding around a false promise (the intentional infliction of emotional distress).

And after all, hell hath no fury like woman lawyer scorned!

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Re: Jilted bride sues

Well she may not getting anything out of him here but if he troubled her and betrayed her than he wl pay for it whether now or later.

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Does breach of promise hold up in a court of law? Also the guy might not have known he didn't want to marry while she was spending her money, the promise could have been true, there's no way to know that it wasn't. And the woman herself might have had something to do with the guy backing out at the last moment, I'm sure he must've had his reasons. Why are you automatically assuming that the guy led her on?

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Serves him right :vivo:

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Yep, there's precedent in common law supporting compensation being awarded for breach of promise. Since there is a recognized cause of action, the lawsuit can be filed. What follows next is the girl proving that the guy made her a promise and thus had a duty to her, she relied on that promise and incurred the expenses, the guy breached his duty to her, and from the breach of the duty, the damages were caused.

As for her being partiallyto blame - the guy can bring forward evidence during the trial that shows she contributed to the duty being breached - comparative negligence. Depending on how the blame is aportioned, she might not get some or all of the damages awarded.

I'm not assuming anything - I answered the OP and said, based on the details of the article, the girl was well within her rights to sue. What comes out at the trial or pre-trial will determine which side has the meritorious claim.

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Fair enough she can file the lawsuit then, law was never my strong area. But you did say:

If that's not an assumption then I don't know what is.

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The only thing I would re-state is:

[quote]
Allegedly, he knew he didn't want to marry her, yet he let her continue to spend money
[/quote]

See excerpts from article:

According to Buttitta’s lawsuit, she and Salerno began dating in 2004 and got engaged in 2007. The suit claims that Salerno began telling friends the wedding was off long before he admitted it to Buttitta. It also accuses him of “deliberately and maliciously reassuring the plaintiff that he loved her and that she could trust him until the day before the cancellation of the wedding” and maintains that Buttitta will incur ongoing medical and psychological costs as a result of her anxiety, depression and humiliation.
and
Dominique Buttitta wanted to get married in style, so she spared no expense on her upcoming nuptials: $30,000 to reserve a banquet hall outside Chicago; $11,000 for flowers and spot lighting; $10,000 for an orchestra; $5,000 on her wedding dress and veil.

As Buttitta excitedly continued preparations, the costs kept mounting. Then, four days before the big day, her fiance called the Oct. 2 wedding off.

With such short notice, she could not recover most the money she had spent — so the 32-year-old lawyer is suing. In a civil suit filed a few weeks ago in Illinois, she accuses Vito Salerno, 31, of “breach of promise to marry” and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She’s seeking more than $95,000 in damages, plus the costs of filing the suit.

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How did she know he was telling friends? Why would any man 'deliberately and maliciously' lead someone on in order for them to waste their money? Good luck proving that in court. Medical and psychological costs are just pure BS, if there were damages awarded for this (due to weddings being called off) every jilted bride would be out there suing their ex-fiances. If I were to venture a guess I'd say this isn't about the money at all, the jilt was just too much for the bride to take.

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Re: Jilted bride sues

Umm, that's where she gets to subpoena his friends who then have to testify under oath and tell the truth (whatever the truth may be) or be charged with perjury. It's not really a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe the guy told his friend: "Hey man, I'm having second thoughts about getting married" or even had other actions/expressions where his lack of committment or fidelity were apparent. For a guy planning on getting married, his alleged actions at the bachelor party call into question his sincerity and committment to actually getting married. And there would be witnesses to his behaviour at the bachelor party, including the strippers, club management or other patrons at the club (or even horror of horror, security tapes).

[quote]
Medical and psychological costs are just pure BS, if there were damages awarded for this (due to weddings being called off) every jilted bride would be out there suing their ex-fiances. If I were to venture a guess I'd say this isn't about the money at all, the jilt was just too much for the bride to take.
[/quote]

Medical and psychological costs are pretty standard when you sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Those are technically measurable damages. If she sees a therapist - the cost of the therapist are part of the damages she's entitled to make a claim for.

No doubt the the bride feels humiliated by being jilted and is suing to get back a little of her own from the guy. As for why other girls (or guys) don't sue when they've been jilted, it's proabably because they don't want to 1) spend the money on a lawsuit, 2) they're too hurt to think about money, or 3) the jilter may have paid the jilted some costs of the wedding - in other words taken responsibility for the breach of promise.

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The guy has to have some motive for deliberately wanting her to lose money. If she can prove that he was acting out some form of vengeance and maliciously leading her on, then maybe she would have a case and would deserve compensation. What I just don't get is why a guy would make all that effort and go to such great lengths simply to cause her a financial loss.

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OMG teh lawyer in sehrysh is out ... komix and shak ... watch and learn

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Hopefully, my last stab at this (but I never say never :)), and it's not to prove a point, but rather to clarify the idea of how "intent" applies in the situation.

First of all there are two causes of action mentioned: 1) breach of promise (BOP) and 2) intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED).

In order to succeed in a civil suit for BOP, the plaintiff must prove there was a promise which in turn created a i) duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff (to follow through on the engagement and enter into a marriage), that the defendant ii) breached that duty (jilted the bride), iii) that the plaintiff suffered damages (costs of the wedding) that iv) caused as a result of the breach of promise (failure to go through with the marriage). But for the promise by the defendant to the bride that they were to marry, the bride would not have spent the money on the wedding.

For the second cause of action, IIED, the plaintiff has to prove that the i) actions of the defendant were either intentional or reckless, ii) that said actions were not normative behaviour or would be considered egregious by a "reasonable person," iii) that the action caused the emotional distress and iv) that the plaintiff was some how damaged or hurt as a result. People have hurt feelings every day because of the actions of others, to prove a case for IIED, the key element is that the action must be outrageous when considered by the standards of society or a reasonable person, and the defendant should have known that the plaintiff or another person would be emotionally harmed by his/her actions. I've underlined the word action because the action was jilting the bride, rather than as your post suggests, intentionally causing her to spend the money on the wedding. The compensation or damages sought in this situation is to provide reparation for any psychological and emotional distress caused to the plaintiff, as opposed to the loss of deposits for wedding (which would be recoverable under the BOP cause of action).

Phew! I hope that makes sense - sorry for the lengthy response.

@libranrulz - Actually maybe KP and Shak can explain better what I'm apparently failing to get across. I'm more than willing to learn from others - and if I've made any errors or omissions, please do correct it.

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What I don't get is that in one story is that why didn't the bride to be return the engagement ring? It should have been sold to cover for the "expenses".

Setting life1 feminazis aside, it is no surprise that extremes shown in the story are discouraging marriage so cohabitation is on the rise even when marriage gives couples good tax incentives.

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wow! She spent way too much on that wedding. I think even if she can prove that he knew for some time that he was not going to marry her she should only get half of her out of pocket expenses. She needs to take some responsibilty for her poor choice in fiance.

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I feel so proud, I understood every single one of her posts :naak: I remember stuff form lectures!!! Yippyyy!

And I agreeeee, she should rinse him dry! Or well…he should at least cover her loses with some compensation for the emotinal distress.

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If the guy had incurred most of the expenses, would you "laaayers" support him to clean the bride to be out?

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@Doppleganger - Who owns the engagement ring was the $64,000 question asked of all first year law students!

Every first year student studied the engagement ring cases. Most jurisdictions have different common law precedents on whether the ring had to be returned to the giver (does the law consider it to be a conditional gift given in anticipation of marriage contract/promise being fulfilled) or could be kept by the recipient (the ring is considered an outright gift and title over the property passed on to the recipient immediately after the proposal was made and accepted). And then there were all of the cases in between :nahi:

In this case, don’t know who owns the ring (depends on the jurisdiction) and whether it can/should be used to pay to cover the expenses.

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^ well the article stated that the bride keeps the ring if and only if she wasn't the one to break it off. If she breaks it off, she should give it back. (which makes total sense to me). In one situation, the bride called off the wedding and got to keep the ring because the man who proposed was legally married to someone else at the time.

Interesting.