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Full-Text Articles in Law

Uncertainty, Reliance, Preliminary Negotiations And The Hold Up Problem, Juliet P. Kostritsky Dec 2007

Uncertainty, Reliance, Preliminary Negotiations And The Hold Up Problem, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Juliet P Kostritsky

Recently, two scholars, Alan Schwartz and Robert Scott, have cast doubt on the conventional view that courts would find liability and award reliance damages in precontractual cases that resembled the famous Hoffman v. Red Owl case. They have argued that courts deny recovery for reliance in cases involving precontractual preliminary negotiation but regularly grant reliance recovery following a preliminary agreement. They identify a pattern or sequence in which success is likely and then provide an analytical framework to justify liability. When parties reach a preliminary agreement that also includes an agreement that they both invest simultaneously and one party strategically …


Plain Meaning Vs. Broad Interpretation: How The Risk Of Opportunism Defeats A Unitary Default Rule For Interpretation, Juliet P. Kostritsky Jan 2007

Plain Meaning Vs. Broad Interpretation: How The Risk Of Opportunism Defeats A Unitary Default Rule For Interpretation, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Juliet P Kostritsky

Plain Meaning vs. Broad Interpretation: How the Risk of Opportunism Defeats a Unitary Default Rule for Interpretation Juliet P. Kostritsky, Case Western Reserve Abstract This essay argues that it is the wrong to think that courts must make a dichotomous choice always to prefer extrinsic evidence or always to exclude it. Sometimes the appropriate interpretive methodology should explicitly forego extrinsic evidence while at other times it should embrace extrinsic evidence. The choice between the two methodologies should depend upon an assessment in each case about which interpretive methodology is most likely to (1) curb opportunistic behavior; and (2) and implement …