Law Commons^™

Covid-19 And Cancelled 2020 College Football Games Contracts: Force Majeure?, Drew Thornley

St. Mary's Law Journal

After COVID-19, majeure clauses accounting for the possibility of a pandemic will become the norm in college football game contracts. Indeed, some contracts are already including pandemics in their lists of force majeure-triggering events. Such language has already been added to collegiate game contracts. For example, a contract signed in May 2020 for the 2025 football game between Wisconsin and Miami (Ohio) lists as force majeure-triggering events “regional or global epidemics, pandemics, quarantines, and other similar health threats (e.g.[,] coronavirus, influenza, etc.).” Scholars explain that “the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic warranted immediate revisitation of college football contracts.”

However, …

Rules Of Regularity: An Empirical Quest For Commercial Certainty In Arbitration, Cornelis J.W. Baaij

William & Mary Business Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court justifies the broad enforceability of arbitration agreements with the notion that arbitration expands parties' autonomy to contract for an efficient alternative to court proceedings. Unfortunately, the current practice of both domestic and cross-border commercial arbitration does not fully live up to these expectations. It is crucial to both autonomy and efficiency theories of contract law that adjudicatory decision-making is predictable so parties can tailor their contracts accordingly. However, commercial arbitration's prevailing culture of confidentiality and lack of stare decisis diminishes commercial certainty. To bring the reality of commercial arbitration closer to the Supreme Court's reasoning, this …

Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks

St. Mary's Law Journal

Several decades ago, an incorrect legal idea surfaced in Texas jurisprudence: that business entity actors are immune from liability for fraud that they themselves commit, as if the entity is solely responsible. Though the Supreme Court of Texas has rejected that result several times, it keeps coming back. The most recent manifestation is as a construction of Texas’s unique veil-piercing statute. Many lawyers have suggested that this view of the veil-piercing statute originated in Menetti v. Chavers, a San Antonio Court of Appeals case decided in 1998. Menetti has in fact played a prominent role in the movement to …