Law Commons^™

Untangling Attorney Retainers From Creditor Claims, Cassandra Burke Robertson, Jesse Wynn

Faculty Publications

Clients will often use a retainer to secure an attorney’s representation. But clients in economic distress may have creditors that are eager to access the client’s funds in the attorney’s hands. Attorneys, clients, courts, and regulators have struggled to understand who has the best claim to such retainer funds. In this Article, we attempt to untangle the most common areas of confusion. We conclude that Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) offers strong protection for an attorney’s interest in client retainers through security interests, even though some courts have misapplied the UCC in this context. Further, we recommend …

Delaware’S Implied Contractual Covenant Of Good Faith And “Sibling Rivalry” Among Equity Holders, Daniel S. Kleinberger

Faculty Scholarship

An obligation of good faith and fair dealing is implied in every common law contract and is codified in the Uniform Commercial Code (“U.C.C”). The terminology differs: Some jurisdictions refer to an “implied covenant;” others to an “implied contractual obligation;” still others to an “implied duty.” But whatever the label, the concept is understood by the vast majority of U.S. lawyers as a matter of commercial rather than entity law. And, to the vast majority of corporate lawyers, “good faith” does not mean contract law but rather conjures up an important aspect of a corporate director’s duty of loyalty.

Nonetheless, …

How To Negotiate A Sales Contract, James J. White

Articles

A. Introduction 1. In my experience, lawyers begin negotiating only after the business people have decided upon the description and quality of the product, the time of delivery, and the mode and amount of payment. The lawyers are left with the pathological problems - who gets what in case of trouble. 2. Most of those pathological problems relate to the seller's responsibility if the product does not conform to the contract or otherwise fails to please the buyer. These failures can cause economic loss to the buyer, economic loss to a remote purchaser, or personal injury or property damage to …

Legislative Process And Commercial Law: Lessons From The Copyright Act Of 1976 And The Uniform Commercial Code, Harold R. Weinberg, William J. Woodward Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Overlap and conflict are inevitable in any legal system in which a federal government and state governments both have authority to enact laws. In our federal system, the Constitution's Supremacy Clause identifies federal law as preeminent in case of conflict. When conflict develops and litigation is required to determine whether state or federal law controls the issue at hand, our system analyzes the problem using the term preemption as a basis for analysis.

This Article explores the federal legislative process that precedes judicial preemption decisions. By studying the legislative process for its sensitivity to preemption issues, possible ways to modify …

8th Annual Seminar On Legal Issues For Financial Institutions, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law, M. Brooke Senn, Keith G. Hanley, R. David Lester, David C. Pottinger, John T. Mcgarvey, Gary L. Stewart, Merrit S. Dietz, Phillip H. Schwartz, Helen Davis Chaitman, Neal L. Wolf

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Outline of speakers' presentations from the 8th Annual Seminar on Legal Issues for Financial Institutions held by UK/CLE on March 11-12, 1988.

Contract Law In Modern Commercial Transactions, An Artifact Of Twentieth Century Business Life?, James J. White

Articles

Diligent first year law students study contract law with a passion previously reserved for romantic objects and religious idols. Their professors lead them in extensive and difficult intellectual explorations of the wilds of contract law. There are careful analyses of why damage recovery X will stimulate performance Y, why recovery A is appropriate to encourage the aggrieved party to return to the market, and so on and so forth. Lurking behind this year long analysis are several inarticulate hypotheses: that they make rational evaluations of the threat of legal sanctions; that they respond in other varied and subtle ways to …

Allocation Of Scarce Goods Under Section 2-615 Of The Uniform Commercial Code: A Comparison Of Some Rival Models, James J. White

Articles

Section 2-615 of the Uniform Commercial Code authorizes a contract seller to allocate goods in short supply when full performance has become commercially impracticable. Most of the cases under and commentary on that section have focused on the issue of commercial impracticability. The allocation aspects of the section have attracted much more modest attention in the cases and in the scholarly journals. The purpose of this article is to examine critically the allocation rule set out in section 2-615(b). That subsection authorizes a seller, upon a finding of commercial impracticability, to allocate "in any manner which is fair and reasonable." …