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Party Sophistication And Value Pluralism In Contract, Meredith R. Miller
Party Sophistication And Value Pluralism In Contract, Meredith R. Miller
Meredith R. Miller
In a previous article, Contract Law, Party Sophistication and the New Formalism, 75 Missouri L. Rev. 493 (2010), I documented a trend in United States case law and scholarship that fashions a dichotomy between sophisticated and unsophisticated parties. That article set out to explain the trend as a theoretical compromise between formalism and realism in the face of a renewed formalism. However, as I noted in the previous article, the “new formalism” may not be formalism at all because it retains normative concerns. Indeed, the shift in legal thought may be more appropriately and simply characterized as embracing pluralism. This …
Strategic Default: The Popularization Of A Debate Among Contract Scholars, Meredith R. Miller
Strategic Default: The Popularization Of A Debate Among Contract Scholars, Meredith R. Miller
Meredith R. Miller
A June 2010 report estimates that roughly 20% of mortgage defaults in the first half of 2009 were “strategic.” “Strategic default” describes the situation where a home borrower has the financial ability to continue to pay her mortgage but chooses not to pay and walks away. The ubiquity of strategic default has lead to innumerable newspaper articles, blog posts, website comments and editorial musings on the morality of homeowners who can afford to pay but choose, instead, to walk away. This Article centers on the current public discourse concerning strategic default, which mirrors a continuing debate among scholars regarding whether …
Revisiting Austin V. Loral: A Study In Economic Duress, Contract Modification And Framing, Meredith R. Miller
Revisiting Austin V. Loral: A Study In Economic Duress, Contract Modification And Framing, Meredith R. Miller
Meredith R. Miller
Austin v. Loral, 29 N.Y.2d 124 (1971), is a favorite among Contracts casebooks because the New York Court of Appeals held that it was a "classic" example of economic duress. It involved Austin, a small gear part manufacturer, who had entered into a subcontract to provide gear parts to Loral, a publicly-traded defense industry supplier. Loral had a contract with the U.S. government to supply radar sets, to be used in the U.S. efforts in Vietnam. Midway through performance of the subcontract, Austin apparently refused to continue to deliver the gear parts unless Loral acceded to certain demands, which included …