Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.

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Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F.Supp.2d 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), more widely known as the Pepsi Points Case, is a famous case tried in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1996, in which the plaintiff, John Leonard, sued PepsiCo, Inc. in an effort to enforce an "offer" to redeem 7,000,000 Pepsi Points for an AV-8 Harrier II jump jet, which Pepsi had shown in a televised commercial (the plaintiff did not in fact collect 7,000,000 Pepsi Points, but instead sent a check for $700,008.50 as permitted by the contest rules). The claim alleged both breach of contract and fraud. The case was finally decided in 1999.

The court, presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, rejected the claim and denied recovery on three grounds.

It was found that the advertisement featuring the jet did not constitute an offer.
The court found that even if the advertisement was an offer, no reasonable person could have believed that the company seriously intended to convey a jet worth $22 million for under a million dollars.
The value of the alleged contract meant that it fell under the provisions of the statute of frauds, but the Statute's requirement for writing between the parties was not fulfilled, so a contract had not been formed.

The case has since been included in several contracts textbooks to illustrate the point that advertisements are not necessarily offers, and that an unreasonable offer may not be enforced.^{[citation needed]}