Contracts Commons^™

The Role Of Courts In The Evolution Of Standard Form Contracts: An Insurance Case Study, Daniel Schwarcz

BYU Law Review

Standard form contracts are a pervasive feature of modern commercial life for ordinary consumers and big businesses alike. Yet remarkably little is currently known about how and when these contracts evolve in response to judicial decisions that interpret and apply them in individual disputes. Homeowners insurance policies offer a particularly fertile ground for studying this issue due to both the prominence of the insurance law doctrine that ambiguities are interpreted against the drafter and the historic standardization of insurance policies across different insurers. Utilizing a unique hand collected dataset, this Article empirically investigates the links between innovation in the dominant …