Sad Reward
By: Amos Goodall
May you never have to experience the legal and banking problems, not to mention the gut-wrench, associated with posting a reward to help find a missing friend, family member or colleague. But if you do, here are he lessons I learned searching for our local district attorney, Ray Gricar, who at age 59 vanished on April 15, 2005, from near his office in Bellefonte, Pa. Ray told his girlfriend he was going for a drive. The last credible sighting of him was in Lewisburg, Pa., 60 miles away.
Ray is a friend. I represent his family. The family, Ray’s friends and I could find no good explanation for his mysterious departure, so we decided to establish a reward of $10,000 for information leading to his return or the apprehension of anyone criminally responsible for his disappearance. In doing so, I discovered that there’s very little literature available on the subject of rewards – but a lot to do when offering one.
Meanwhile, because Ray disappeared, his affairs when into a sort of legal interregnum. If a person is known to be deceased, a court has the power to appoint an executor or administrator to handle his final affairs. But no court has the power to appoint a fiduciary to carry out the estate plans of a person who may, or may not be deceased.
Most states have an office to handle such matters; in Pennsylvania, it’s known as a Trustee Durante Absentia and, to preserve the status quo, it allows a fiduciary to be appointed to manage a person’s affairs during his absence. Such a trustee’s duties are more limited than an executor or administrator. We asked the court to appoint Ray’s adult daughter as his trustee, which it did. She may be serving in that capacity for some time. In Pennsylvania, only when a person whose disappeared without explanation has been gone for seven years is he presumed to be deceased. The courts can lengthen or shorten this period. We have no plans now to go to the court and ask for it to be shortened.
A Prosecutor’s Career
According to the most recently published figures issued by the National Crime Information Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were 109,531 active missing person files on Dec. 31, 2005. Even though Ray is counted among that number, family and friends can’t help fearing the worst. Most of Ray’s career was spent prosecuting dangerous criminals, from drug dealers to domestic abusers to mobsters.
We posted a reward to get people to drag the Susquehanna River and comb through the woods near Lewisburg where Ray’s car was found; maybe someone might even spot him somewhere in public. Police authorities reported that the reward served its purpose in that there were more canoes and kayaks on the Susquehanna in that location during the month following the announcement of the reward than during any other late spring in memory. Ray’s county-issued laptop computer was found in the river – but it’s hard drive had been removed and no other trace of him was discovered.
Of course, there’ve been other, more famous rewards. Often, rewards are for criminals, from the recent “up to $25 million,” offered by the U.S. government for information leading to Osama Bin Laden, to $25,000, offered in the 19th century by the St. Louis Midland Railroad for anyone who nabbed legendary outlaw Jesse James. Famous private citizens have also offered rewards; Randall Hearst offered $50,000 in 1974 for the return of his daughter, Patricia, kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
What I’ve found in helping create the reward for information about Ray is that, legally speaking, this has been an effort to create what my contract professor, Joseph D. Calamari at Fordham University School of Law in New York City, described as “a unilateral contract.” Since law school, in 35 years of practicing, I never heard a lawyer use that term again – until now.
Most people see a contract as involving an offer that’s been accepted, creating a bilateral contract; both sides are obligated to each other. But a unilateral contract is one in which only one side is bound: The obligation to pay follows actual performance, such as “If you will rake my leaves, I will pay you $25.” Typically, there is some control, as the offeror and offeree are usually communicating with each other directly. A reward, on the other hand, is an offer to the public in general, and once made, very difficult to change or cancel.
It’s important that a reward be precisely defined and limited, so that the offeror does not become obligated to pay the reward to many people for an indefinite period of time, or for information that isn’t really helpful to law enforcement. On the other hand, the reward cannot be defined in such a circumscribed fashion that it fails to encourage the public to join in the search.
If you’re not careful, you could be contractually obligated to pay someone a reward when he has done very little to earn it. Moreover, in Pennsylvania at least, a reward can be payable to someone who did not even know it at the time of his qualifying conduct. It’s conceivable that you even could be obligated to pay the reward after all reason for its existence has passed. The worst of all possible worlds would be to use imprecise language in the reward that might allow multiple claimants, each seeking the full reward. Finally, the reward needs to contain a procedure for its own termination once it’s served its purpose, especially in Pennsylvania where a court has held the expiration of the statute of limitations period would be insufficient to cut off claims for the reward.
On a positive note, we did find a way for people contributing to the reward claim fund to claim a tax deduction if their effort produced the information sought. We did this by enlisting a local charitable agency to sponsor the reward.
Distress over Ray’s disappearance has not been just a family affair. During a long prosecutorial career, he’d been committed to protecting victims of domestic violence, and supporting activities to find an prosecute domestic violence perpetrators. The local Women’s Resource Center sponsored the reward.
Ray’s family and I set up the fund, owned by the Women’s Resource Center, at a local bank, subject to an agreement that stated that donors contributed to the Women’s Resource Center in offering the reward. Checks contributing to the reward fund were drawn to the order of the Women’s Resource Center and the Gricar family. This committee made the offer, supervises the fund, and rules upon any applications for the reward.
Once the money was in place, a reward offer was prepared and signed; a notice was published. We took no action until we were satisfied that there were enough funds to back the offer. We were concerned about not having the reward committee make a promise that would obligate it to pay the reward regardless of whether there were adequate funds available.
We set the limit at making a claim for the reward at one year, because the activity we hoped to encourage should have been completed by that time.
That year has come and gone without another credible clue, despite massive publicity on local, national and even international levels. At this point, we have filed an accounting and sought court approval to return the reward funds.
For me, the best reward would have been to contribute to Ray’s successful return. A distant second would have been to help his family and the community achieve closure. Neither result was achieved. Still, I am grateful to be a lawyer and to have been able to offer some help to my friend’s family in their time of need.