Law Commons^™

Warranties In The Box, James J. White

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Thousands of times each day, a buyer opens a box that contains a new computer or other electronic device. There he finds written material including an express "Limited Warranty." Sometimes the box has come by FedEx directly from the manufacturer; other times the buyer has carried it home from a retail merchant. Despite the fact that it is standard practice for the manufacturer to include a limited written express warranty on the sale of such products,' and despite the fact that both the manufacturer and the buyer believe that warranty to be legally enforceable, the law on its enforceability is …

Contracting Under Amended 2-207 (Freedom From Contract Symposium), James J. White

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Amended Section 2-207 of the Uniform Commercial Code1 (the Code) states new contract rules. I call these "contract rules" to avoid the labels of contract formation and contract interpretation. These new rules cure many of the problems presented by current Section 2-2072 and remind courts that the purpose of Section 2-207 is to interpret a contract that has been made, not to see if a contract exists. One is tempted to label current Section 2-207 as a contract formation provision-and to some extent that would be right-but most of this Section's work has been in contract interpretation, not in contract …

Default Rules In Sales And The Myth Of Contracting Out, James J. White

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In this article, I trace the dispute in the courts and before the ALI and NCCUSL over the proper contract formation and interpretation default rules. In Part II, I consider the Gateway litigation. In Part III, I deal with UCITA and the revision to Article 2. In Part IV, I consider the merits of the competing default rules.

Comparing The General Good Faith Provisions Of The Pecl And The Ucc: Appearance And Reality, Harry Flechtner

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"Good faith" is a notoriously amorphous and variable concept. Thus it is the interpretation and application of the concept that provides the most important points of comparison for the good faith provisions of the Principles of European Contract Law ("PECL") and the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") . The UCC has been in force since the 1950's, and its good faith provisions have been applied in hundreds of cases. In contrast, the PECL is a new phenomenon and its good faith rules have not been applied to actual cases. The comment to PECL Article 1:201, however, includes five concrete illustrations of …

Good Faith And The Cooperative Antagonist (Symposium On Revised Article 1 And Proposed Revised Article 2 Of The Uniform Commercial Code), James J. White

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One of Karl Llewellyn's most noted achievements in the Uniform Commercial Code was to impose the duty of good faith on every obligation under the Uniform Commercial Code.1 Some (I am one) have privately thought that imposition of this unmeasurable, undefinable duty was Llewellyn's cruelest trick, but no court, nor any academic writer, has ever been so bold or so gauche as to suggest that good faith should not attend the obligations of parties under the UCC. Notwithstanding this silent indorsement of the duty of good faith, the courts2 and commentators3 have had difficulty in determining what is and what …

Autistic Contracts (Symposium), James J. White

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In this paper I address the question whether the law should affirm the offeror's inference and should bind the offeree to the terms proposed by the offeror even in circumstances where the offeree may not intend to accept those terms and where an objective observer might not draw the inference of agreement from the offeree's act. Modem practice and current proposals concerning contract formation in Revised Article 2 and in the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (nee Article 2B) press these issues on us more forcefully than old practices and different law did. 1 But contractual autism is not new; …

The Tentative Case Against Flexibility In Commercial Law, Omri Ben-Shahar

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Well-rooted in modern commercial law is the idea that the law and the obligations that it enforces should reflect the empirical reality of the relationship between the contracting parties. The Uniform Commercial Code ("Code") champions this tradition by viewing the performance practices formed among the parties throughout their interaction as a primary source for interpreting and supplementing their explicit contracts. The generous recognition of waiver and modifications, as well as the binding force the Code accords to course of performance, course of dealings, and customary trade usages, effectively permits unwritten commercial practices to vary and to erode explicit contractual provisions.

Freeing The Tortious Soul Of Express Warranty Law, James J. White

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I suspect that most American lawyers and law students regard express warranty as neither more nor less than a term in a contract, a term that is subject to conventional contract rules on formation, interpretation, and remedy. Assume, for example, that a buyer sends a purchase order to a seller and the purchase order specifies the delivery of 300 tons of "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." The acknowledgment also describes the goods to be sold as "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." Every American lawyer would agree that there is a contract to deliver such steel and furthermore would conclude that …

Form Contracts Under Revised Article 2 (Symposium: Consumer Protection And The Uniform Commercial Code), James J. White

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The current draft of section 2-206 in Revised Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") entitled "Consumer Contract: Standard Form"1 presents a unique and threatening challenge to the drafters of consumer form contracts. In earlier drafts, one part of the section applied to both to commercial contracts and consumer contracts. It required that "one manifest assent" to any form contract, commercial or consumer, in order for it to be binding.2 Bowing to commercial opposition in the most recent version, the drafters have omitted all reference to commercial contracts. As the section stands, it applies only to consumer contracts.

How To Negotiate A Sales Contract, James J. White

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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 …

The Influence Of International Practice On The Revision Of Article 5 Of The Ucc, James J. White

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The topic of this symposium is the influence that international law has had on domestic law of the United States. I believe that the story of the revision of Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code fits here, but some might dispute that. Although it is certainly fair to say that international practice-in a sense international law-was a powerful influence on the revision of Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code, that practice, and the way in which that influence was exerted were almost entirely sui generis to the letter of credit law, practice and history.

Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White

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My responsibility in this paper is to address three questions. (1) How has the legal realist body of thought affected contract law and its application? (2) How will contract law and its application be affected in the future by realist thinking? (3) If the realist viewpoint were fully accepted, what kind of system would result and how would contract law be affected? Because my focus is upon a principal legislative monument to realism, Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code (the "U.C.C."), and upon its drafter, Karl Llewellyn, I will not answer any of the three questions explicitly. By focusing …

The Decline Of The Contract Market Damage Model, James J. White

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In law school every American lawyer learns that the conventional measure of damages for breach of a sales contract is the difference between the contract price and the market price. Even before these rules were embodied in the Uniform Sales Act and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), they were a staple of Anglo-American common law. They remain the rules with which a court would determine damage liability not only for the sale of goods, but also for the sale of real estate and securities.

Eight Cases And Section 251, James J. White

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[A] continuing sense of reliance and security that the promised performance will be forthcoming. . . is an important feature of the bargain-so states Comment 1 to section 2-609 of the Uniform Commercial Code. At common law, one party to a contract might suffer considerable and justifiable anxiety about the other party's willingness or ability to perform and yet have no legal basis for cancelling the contract or for procuring additional assurances from the other party. Section 251 of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts is designed to provide a remedy for one party's reasonable fears that the other party to …

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

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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 …

Enforcement Of A Promise In Modern American Law (Gendai Amerikaho Ni Okeru Yakusoku No Kyosei), Whitmore Gray

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A series of seminar lectures given by Whitmore Gray in Tokyo, Japan during October 1968. Six articles were subsequently published in “Kaigai Shojihomu” (The International Business Law Bulletin) between July 1969 and May 1970.

The sixth and final installment describes the history of contractual enforcement in the U.S. and highlights changes introduced through adoption of the UCC.

Remedies For Breach Under The Uniform Commercial Code (Ucc Ni Okeru Keiyaku Furiko Ni Taisuru Kyusai), Whitmore Gray

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A series of seminar lectures given by Whitmore Gray in Tokyo, Japan during October 1968. Six articles were subsequently published in “Kaigai Shojihomu” (The International Business Law Bulletin) between July 1969 and May 1970. The fifth installment discusses the difficulty of remedies and various methods of enforcement.

Contract Interpretation And The Uniform Commercial Code (Ucc Ni Okeru Keiyaku No Kaishaku), Whitmore Gray

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A series of seminar lectures given by Whitmore Gray in Tokyo, Japan during October 1968. Six articles were subsequently published in “Kaigai Shojihomu” (The International Business Law Bulletin) between July 1969 and May 1970. The third installment introduces the basic principles of contract interpretation.

Contract Interpretation Under The Uniform Commercial Code (Ucc Ni Okeru Keiyaku No Kaishaku), Whitmore Gray

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A series of seminar lectures given by Whitmore Gray in Tokyo, Japan during October 1968. Six articles were subsequently published in “Kaigai Shojihomu” (The International Business Law Bulletin) between July 1969 and May 1970.

The fourth installment discusses further considerations and principles that impact contract interpretation.

Contract Formation Under The Uniform Commercial Code (Ucc Ni Okeru Keiyaku No Seiritsu), Whitmore Gray

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A series of seminar lectures given by Whitmore Gray in Tokyo, Japan during October 1968. Six articles were subsequently published in “Kaigai Shojihomu” (The International Business Law Bulletin) between July 1969 and May 1970.

The second installment discusses issues related to requirements compelling completion of a contract or pushing the issue to court.