## Facts

- A cannery operator hired seamen and fishermen in San Francisco to sail to Alaska, prepare and operate the cannery for the 1900 season, and return to San Francisco.
- The written agreements set fixed seasonal wages ($50 or $60) plus a per-fish payment, and required the workers to perform regular ship’s duties and other work as directed by the operator’s agents.
- After arrival at a remote Alaska site and before the fishing season, the workers stopped working and demanded an increase to $100 for the season for performing the same services already covered by the original contracts.
- Because the location was remote, the season short, and substitutes not practically obtainable, the operator’s superintendent signed a writing promising the higher wage so work would resume, while stating he lacked authority to change the existing contracts.
- After the season, the operator paid according to the original contracts (including fish-based compensation) and refused to pay the additional amount claimed under the later writing.
- The workers argued the modification was justified by allegedly defective nets, but the trial court found the defective-nets claim was not proved.

## Issues

1. Whether a promise to resume and complete performance of duties already owed under an existing contract is consideration for an employer’s promise of higher wages.
2. Whether a contract modification obtained by a threatened refusal to perform in circumstances leaving the other party with no practical alternative is enforceable.
3. Whether the employer was bound by a purported modification signed by a superintendent who stated he lacked authority to alter the original contracts.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the judgment for the workers and ordered the libel dismissed.
- The court held the $100 wage promise was unenforceable because it lacked consideration: the workers promised only what they were already contractually bound to do.
- The court further treated the modification as the product of coercion, given the workers’ threatened nonperformance and the employer’s inability to secure replacements in time.
- The court accepted the trial court’s finding that the alleged defective-nets justification was not established, leaving no basis to treat the modification as a fair adjustment to an employer-caused problem.

## Legal Principles

- Under the pre-existing duty rule, performance (or a promise of performance) of an existing contractual obligation is not consideration for a new promise of increased compensation for the same performance.
- A modification extracted by a refusal to perform, where the promisor exploits the other party’s necessity and lack of practical alternatives, is not enforceable.
- A party cannot convert threatened breach into a binding wage increase by offering only the same performance already owed, absent a valid additional exchange or noncoercive bargaining conditions.

## Conclusion

The court refused to enforce a mid-performance wage increase demanded after the workers were already bound to do the same work, holding the modification void for lack of consideration and obtained through coercive pressure created by a threatened refusal to perform in a setting where the employer could not realistically replace the crew.


Alaska Packers’ Ass’n v. Domenico, 117 F. 99 (9th Cir. 1902)