Can a monetary prize from an old 1968 game card, without an expiration date, still be claimed?
Question Details: My mom died about a year ago. As the executor, I have been slowly going through her papers. I appear to have found a game card from an old gas station promotion that indicates she may have been a monetary prize winner as all the pieces necessary are there. My mom was not fluent in English and I suspect she thought the entire card had to be filled in order to collect a prize. The back of the game card does not indicate an expiraton date. Do I have any chance of following up with anyone to possibly collect on behalf of my siblings and myself?
Business Law Answers
I think that's extremely unlikely.
A contest or promotion like this is analyzed under contract law. If you have a winning entry, and turn it in, that forms a contract by accepting the offer made in the promotion, and if the company running the promotion doesn't pay, they're in breach of that contract.
However, there are two huge problems here, even if the company is still in business 41 years later. First, any contract offer that doesn't have a deadline has an implied, "within a reasonable time" deadline, and while "reasonable" is a flexible term and its meaning depends on the context, 41 years isn't reasonable. Second, contract claims have a statute of limitation, and this is way beyond it.
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