[Federal] Southern District Court of New York, United States, 21 August 2002, 2002 Westlaw 1933881, 2002 US Dist. LEXIS 15442 (accepting that claim stated an enforceable cause of action for promissory estoppel when it alleged breach of “(1) a clear and definite promise, (2) the promise is made with the expectation that the promisee will rely on it, (3) the promisee in fact reasonably relied on the promise, and (4) the promisee suffered a definite and substantial detriment as a result of the reliance”).

One court found that a supplier would be bound by its promise to supply raw materials when in reliance on this promise the promisee sought and received administrative approval to manufacture generic drugs.

' The assent of the promisee is not always required”. This is actually a second formulation of a promise, one not involving any requirement for acceptance or anything of the sort as a condition of the creation of the unilateral act as such.

There is no simple answer; it all depends whether it appears that greater weight should be assigned to the promise or to the associated condition, but at all events the necessary correlation between the two means that we cannot properly speak of a unilateral act stricto sensu, inasmuch as the compulsory nature of the condition imposes specific actions upon the promisee State.

An interesting case of promise, in which the promisee was an international organization, the United Nations, is as follows. In the course of negotiations aimed at settling the question of the legal status that Switzerland would grant to United Nations employees, Mr. Perréard, a member of the Council of State of the Canton of Geneva, stated that the Geneva authorities were “prepared to grant the United Nations the benefit of the same exemptions and the same privileges as had previously been granted to other international institutions”.