|a.||1.||Reciprocally acting or related; reciprocally receiving and giving; reciprocally given and received; reciprocal; interchanged; |
|2.||Possessed, experienced, or done by two or more persons or things at the same time; common; joint; |
Mutual, as Johnson will tell us, means something reciprocal, a giving and taking. How could people have mutual ancestors?
|Adj.||1.||mutual - common to or shared by two or more parties; "a common friend"; "the mutual interests of management and labor"|
|2.||mutual - concerning each of two or more persons or things; especially given or done in return; "reciprocal aid"; "reciprocal trade"; "mutual respect"; "reciprocal privileges at other clubs"|
2. In contracts there must always be a consideration in order to make them valid. This is sometimes mutual, as when one man promises to pay a sum of money to another in consideration that he shall deliver him a horse, and the latter promises to deliver him the horse in consideration of being paid the price agreed upon. When a man and a woman promise to marry each other, the promise is mutual. It is one of the qualities of an award, that it be mutual; but this doctrine is not as strict now as formerly. 3 Rand. 94; see 3 Caines 254; 4 Day, 422; 1 Dall. 364, 365; 6 Greenl. 247; 8 Greenl. 315; 6 Pick. 148.
3. To entitle a contracting party to a specific performance of an agreement, it must be mutual, for otherwise it will not be compelled. 1 Sch. & Lef. 18; Bunb. 111; Newl. Contr. 152. See Rose. Civ. Ev. 261.
4. A distinction has been made between mutual debts and mutual credits. The former term is more limited in its signification than the latter. In bankrupt cases where a person was indebted to the bankrupt in a sum payable at a future day, and the bankrupt owed him a smaller sum which was then due; this, though in strictness, not a mutual debt, was holden to be a mutual credit. 1 Atk. 228, 230; 7 T. R. 378; Burge on Sur. 455, 457.