Contracts Commons^™

Say What? The Resolution Of Ambiguous Written Agreements In West Virginia, James Matthew Davis

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Big Macs: Not-So-Happy Deals And The Eurozone Crisis, Lindsay Edelstein

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note examines the challenges of invoking Material Adverse Change (MAC) clauses in mergers and acquisitions, particularly during economic crises like the Eurozone Crisis. It argues that the strict standard applied by U.S. courts makes it difficult for buyers to prove a MAC, rendering such clauses ineffective. The analysis suggests that MAC disputes are better resolved through arbitration by financial experts rather than courts.

Panel 1: Trends In International Mediation And Arbitration, Hagit Elul, Ank Santens, Martin Gusy, Matthew Weldon

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The symposium explores recent trends in international mediation and arbitration, focusing on the development of ethics guidelines and the challenges of obtaining interim relief. It highlights the growing need for standardized ethical frameworks and the evolving role of emergency arbitrators in addressing urgent disputes.

Regulating Sovereign Wealth Funds Through Contract, Naveen Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mistake In Assumptions, Stephen Waddams

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Mistake raises several important and difficult questions for contract law. The question addressed here is, when is it an excuse from contractual obligation that a contract has been made under the influence of a mistake of fact? Posed in this form, the question invites attention to aspects of contract law not usually considered in relation to each other, particularly misrepresentation, frustration, and more generally, unjust enrichment, all areas in which Professor McCamus has written extensively. This article brings these areas together with the object of throwing useful light on each of them, both from the point of view of understanding …

Disclaimers Of Contractual Liability And Voluntary Obligations, Michael G. Pratt

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Contractual obligations are traditionally regarded as voluntary. A voluntary obligation is one that can be acquired only if one intends to acquire it. This traditional understanding finds doctrinal expression in the requirement that contracting parties intend to create legal relations. It has, however, been doubted that the Anglo-Canadian law of contract insists on this requirement. Skeptics argue that cases ostensibly decided on the basis of such a requirement are better explained otherwise. In this paper I invoke the legal force of contractual disclaimers to show that contractual obligations are indeed voluntary. When parties to an agreement purport to exclude it …

Consideration Which Happens To Fail, Andrew Kull

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Recent English commentary employs the timeworn expression “failure of consideration” in an unprecedented way. It can now designate an expansive residual category of grounds for restitution: at its fullest, “the failure to sustain itself of the state of affairs contemplated as a basis” for a transaction by which one party is enriched at the expense of another. Because the result is plainly to incorporate a civilian-style “absence of basis” test within commonlaw unjust enrichment, the new “failure of consideration” carries an incidental implication for Canadian restitution law: if Garland v Consumers’ Gas really announced a shift from commonlaw “unjust factors” …

Regulation Through Boilerplate: An Apologia, Omri Ben-Shahar

Michigan Law Review

You have to salute Peggy Radin. She has said what others who agree with her have for so long been hesitant to utter out loud: the fine print is not a contract. There is no agreement to it, no real consent, not even “blanket assent.” It is nothing but paperwork and should have the legal fortune of junk mail. Those lengthy, unreadable pages with terms and conditions that come prepacked with consumer products or that demand to be clicked (“We Accept”) on computer screens — does anyone really think that they contain arrangements that people knowingly agreed to? How is …

Rationality's Reach, Adam B. Badawi

Michigan Law Review

Economic analysis and the rational actor model have dominated contracts scholarship for at least a generation. In the past fifteen years or so, however, a group of behaviorists has challenged the ability of the rational choice model to account for consumer behavior. These behaviorists are not trying to dismantle the entire enterprise. They generally accept the fundamentals of economic analysis but argue that the rational actor model can be improved by incorporating evidence of decisionmaking flaws that people exhibit. Oren Bar-Gill has been one of the foremost and influential proponents of a behaviorist take on contracts, and his recent book, …

Killing Conscience: The Unintended Behavioral Consequences Of "Pay For Performance", Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary lawmakers and reformers often argue that ex ante incentive contracts providing for large material rewards are the best and possibly only way to motivate corporate executives and other employees to serve their firms' interests. This Article offers a critique of the "pay for performance" approach. In particular, it explores why, for a variety of mutually reinforcing reasons, workplaces that rely on ex ante incentive contracts suppress unselfish prosocial behavior (conscience) and promote selfishness and opportunism. The end result may not be more efficient, but more uncooperative, unethical, and illegal employee behavior.

Limiting Unfettered Challenges To Patent Validity: Upholding No-Challenge Clauses In Pre-Litigation Patent Settlements Between Preexisting Parties To A License, Nicholas Roper

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Efficient Breach, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The theory of efficient breach is the best known, and the most controversial, product of nearly half a century of economic analysis of contract law. In its simplest form, which is the one that dominates the legal imagination, the theory argues that expectation damages are good because they allow, even encourage, a party to breach when performance becomes inefficient, thereby increasing social welfare. Many noneconomists assume the theory is well supported by principles of neoclassical economics. Thus critics commonly focus on the theory’s moral failings, or on problems with the neoclassical approach more generally. But today no economic thinker defends …

Summary Of Progressive Gulf Ins. Co. V. Faehnrich, 130 Nev. Adv. Op. 19, Jeffrey Pike

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined whether Nevada public policy precludes giving effect to a choice-of-law provision in an insurance contract made by parties residing outside Nevada that would deny Nevada residents injured in Nevada recovery under NRS 485.3091.

Order On Motion To Enforce Settlement And Motion To Withdraw As Counsel (Davis Lee Companies, Llc), Alice D. Bonner

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Motion For Withdrawal Of Admissions And Motion To Enter Judgment (The City Of Atlanta), Alice D. Bonner

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Motion For Judgment On The Pleadings (Post Properties, Inc. Et Al.), John J. Goger

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Philosophical Foundations Of Contract Law, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Introduction to Philosophical Foundations of Contract Law (Gregory Klass, George Letsas & Prince Saprai eds., Oxford University Press, forthcoming) describes the field of contract theory and locates the essays in the volume within that field. The volume includes chapters from Aditi Bagchi, Randy Barnett, Lisa Bernstein, Mindy Chen-Wishart, Charles Fried, Avery Katz, Dori Kimel, Gregory Klass, George Letsas and Prince Saprai, Daniel Markovits, Liam Murphy, David Owens, J.E. Penner, Margaret Jane Radin, Joseph Raz, Stephen Smith, and Charlie Webb.

Joint Product Improvement By Client And Customer Support Center: The Role Of Gain-Share Contracts In Coordination, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Alok Gupta, Sameer Hasija

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the role of different contract types in coordinating the joint product improvement effort of a client and a customer support center. The customer support center's costly efforts at joint product improvement include transcribing and analyzing customer feedback, analyzing market trends, and investing in product design. Yet this cooperative role must be adequately incentivized by the client, since it could lead to fewer service requests and hence lower revenues for the customer support center. We model this problem as a sequential game with double-sided moral hazard in a principal-agent framework (in which the client is the principal). We follow …

Order On Dispositive Motions (Southern States Chemical Inc. Et Al.), Alice D. Bonner

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Plaintiff's Motion For Temporary Restraining Order And Defendants' Motion To Compel Arbitration (United Sciences, Llc Et Al.), John J. Goger

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Pending Motions (Raser Technologies, Inc. Et Al.), John J. Goger

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Sino-American Contract Bargaining And Dispute Resolution, Garrick Apollon

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article offers information on international trade disputes between the U.S. and China. Topics include economic interdependency of Sino-American trade, cross-legal and cross-cultural relationships between the U.S. and China, and the historical and cultural preference for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in China. Other topics include learning of cross-cultural management and international business negotiation.

Online Terms Of Service: A Shield For First Amendment Scrutiny Of Government Action, Jacquelyn E. Fradette

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Note will canvas popular opinions and perceptions about First Amendment rights on the Internet using examples of public outcry over recent instances of speech limitation. It will also discuss the state action doctrine generally and how the presence of this doctrine most likely renders certain popular public constitutional intuitions about the First Amendment erroneous.

Part II will provide an overview of how courts have taken an expansive and protective view of private ordering between online parties. It will discuss how courts have developed a robust freedom to contract jurisprudence in the Internet context. Because courts essentially …

Weathering Wal-Mart, Joseph A. Seiner

Notre Dame Law Review

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2531 (2011), the Supreme Court held that a proposed class of over a million women that had alleged pay and promotion discrimination against the nation’s largest retailer could not be certified. According to the Court, the plaintiffs had failed to establish a common thread in the case sufficient to tie their claims together. The academic response to Wal-Mart was immediate and harsh: the decision will serve as the death knell for mass employment litigation, undermining the workplace protections provided by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). …

In Defense Of Surrogacy Agreements: A Modern Contract Law Perceptive, Yehezkel Margalit

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

The American public’s attention was first exposed to the practice of surrogacy in 1988 with the drama and verdict of the Baby M case. Over the last twenty-five years, the practice of surrogacy has slowly become increasingly socially accepted, and even welcomed. This evolution serves to emphasize the bizarre judicial and legislative silence regarding surrogacy that exists today in the vast majority of U.S. jurisdictions. In this Article, I describe and trace the dramatic revolution that took place during the recent decades, as the surrogacy practice has drastically changed from one viewed as problematic and rejected to a socially widespread …

Order On January 17, 2014 Hearing (Vesta Holdings Viii, Llc), Alice D. Bonner

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Larry Ribstein's Fiduciary Duties, Kelli A. Alces

Scholarly Publications

Larry Ribstein, throughout his remarkable scholarly career, developed a theory formed around his analysis that the end of fiduciary obligation is a near possibility. Understanding fiduciary obligations as a carefully defined term may indicate, however, that this fiduciary obligation can be a useful part of a wider selection of relationships than Ribstein allowed. This Article both considers Ribstein’s theory of fiduciary duty, and ultimately turns that same theory on its head by advocating the use of a narrow duty in a variety of contexts as opposed to a broad duty in a limited range of circumstances

Two Alternate Visions Of Contract Law In 2025, Nancy S. Kim

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eulogy For The Eula, A, Miriam A. Cherry

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Women Act And Its Impact On The U.S. Supreme Court And International Law: A Story Of Vindication, Loss, And A New Human Rights Paradigm, The, Cheryl Hanna

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.