Contracts Commons^™

Enforcing Promises: An Examination Of The Basis Of Contract, Charles J. Goetz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The obligation to keep promises is a commonly acknowledged moral duty. Yet not all promises – however solemnly vowed – are enforceable at law. Why are some promises legally binding and others not? Orthodox doctrinal categories provide only modest assistance in answering this persistent question. Conventional analysis, for example, has distinguished promises made in exchange for a return promise or performance from nonreciprocal promises. Indeed, common law "bargain theory" is classically simple: bargained-for promises are presumptively enforceable; nonreciprocal promises are presumptively unenforceable. But this disarmingly simple theory has never mirrored reality. Contract law has ventured far beyond such narrow limitations, …

Measuring Sellers' Damages: The Lost-Profits Puzzle, Charles J. Goetz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

A buyer repudiates a fixed-price contract to purchase goods, and the seller sues for damages. How should a court measure the seller's loss? The answer seems simple: The seller should be awarded damages sufficient to place it in the same economic position it would have enjoyed had the buyer performed the contract. But the seductive conceptual simplicity of the compensation principle disguises substantial practical problems in measuring seller's damages.

Contract law has traditionally minimized measurement difficulties by basing damages in most cases on the difference between the contract price and market value of the repudiated goods. The common law courts …

International Products Liability Litigation: Choosing The Applicable Law, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Growth in transnational commerce and travel has substantially increased the cases in which injury-causing products have significant contacts with more than one state. A defective automobile is manufactured in Italy, by an Italian company, and exported to France; it is purchased by a French student who drives it to Oxford, where a defect in the steering causes an accident and injury. Or, an Englishman on a business trip to Italy buys a box of Swiss chocolate, eats the candy during a stopover in Paris, and falls ill on arrival back in London; as a result of the illness, he is …

Liquidated Damages, Penalties And The Just Compensation Principle: Some Notes On An Enforcement Model And A Theory Of Efficient Breach, Charles J. Goetz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

For more than five centuries, strict judicial scrutiny has been applied to contractual provisions which specify an agreed amount of damages upon breach of a base obligation. Although the standards determining the enforceability of liquidated damage clauses have developed novel and labyrinthine permutations, their motivating principle has remained essentially immutable. For an executory agreement fixing damages in case of breach to be enforceable, it must constitute a reasonable forecast of the provable injury resulting from breach; otherwise, the clause will be unenforceable as a penalty and the non-breaching party will be limited to conventional damage measures.

The historical genesis of …

Contractual Aspects Of Malpractice, Kevin H. Tierney

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Choice Of Law In Contracts: Some Thoughts On The Weintraub Approach, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Enforcing The Contract To Bargain, Charles L. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Independent Doctrine Of Ratification V. The Restatement And Mr. Seavey, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Truth-In-Negotiations Act – An Examination Of Defective Pricing In Government Contracts, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Charges of excessive profitmaking on government contracts have issued from the Senate floor and the nation's press and have provided the impetus for recent congressional investigations and proposals for remedial legislation. Profiteering by government contractors is a problem of potentially enormous dimensions since purchases by the federal government total more than seventy-seven billion dollars – over ten per cent of the gross national product. Because the greatest part of these purchases are made by the Department of Defense, congressional action aimed at minimizing excessive profits has focused upon Defense Department procurement activities under the Armed Services Procurement Act (ASPA).

Contracts, Charles L. Knapp, James W. Carroll, James A. Clarkson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Limitations On Contract Termination Rights—Franchise Cancellations, Ernest Gellhorn

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contracts, Charles L. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Developments In Contract Liability Of Trusts And Trustees, John D. Johnston Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ehrenzweig And The Statute Of Frauds: An Inquiry Into The Rule Of Validation, Brainerd Currie

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Section 301 And The Primary Jurisdiction Of The Nlrb, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Several labor cases recently decided by the Supreme Court have brought into issue a conflict between the NLRB's primary jurisdiction over matters subject to sections 7 and 8 of the NLRA and the doctrine that courts have jurisdiction to enforce collective agreements. Professor Sovern discusses these cases and argues that the Court properly decided that the principle of exclusive NLRB jurisdiction should yield in suits on collective agreements, but he criticizes the Court for not having articulated a satisfactory rationale in support of this result. After an analysis of the doctrine of preemption, he considers five types of labor-contract suits …