Accord

Contracts. A satisfaction agreed upon between the party injuring and the party injured, which when performed is a bar to all actions upon this account.

In order to make a good accord it is essential: That the accord be legal. An agreement to drop a criminal prosecution as a satisfaction for an assault and imprisonment is void.

It must be advantageous to the contracting party; hence restoring to the plaintiff his chattels, or his land, of which the defendant has wrongfully dispossessed him, will not be any consideration to support a promise by the plaintiff not to sue him for those injuries.

It must be certain; hence an agreement that the defendant shall relinquish the possession of a house in satisfaction., is not valid, unless it is also agreed at what time it shall be relinquished.

The defendant must be privy to the contract. If therefore the consideration for the promise not to sue proceeds from another, the defendant is a stranger to the agreement, and the circumstance that the promise has been made to him will be of no avail, but in such case equity will grant relief by injunction.

The accord must be executed.

Accord with satisfaction when completed has two effects; it is a payment of the debt; and it is a species of sale of the thing given by the debtor to the creditor, in satisfaction; but it differs from it in this, that it is not valid until the delivery of the article, and there is no warranty of the thing thus sold, except perhaps the title; for in regard to this, it cannot be doubted, that if the debtor gave on an accord and satisfaction the goods of another, there would be no satisfaction.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.