Contracts Commons^™

Premier Porfolio 2, Llc Order On Motion To Dismiss, Elizabeth E. Long

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

No abstract provided.

Morris Hardwick Schneider, Llc Order Striking Defendant Divot Holdings, Llc's Answer, Kelly Lee Ellerbee

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

No abstract provided.

Bronner V. Hardy Et Al., Order On Pending Motions For Summary Judgment, Melvin Westmoreland

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

No abstract provided.

Cambridge Swinerton, Llc, Order Denying Defendant New Alenco Windows, Ltd.'S Motion To Transfer Venue, Alice D. Bonner

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

No abstract provided.

Data-Informed Duties In Ai Development, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Law should help direct—and not merely constrain—the development of artificial intelligence (AI). One path to influence is the development of standards of care both supplemented and informed by rigorous regulatory guidance. Such standards are particularly important given the potential for inaccurate and inappropriate data to contaminate machine learning. Firms relying on faulty data can be required to compensate those harmed by that data use—and should be subject to punitive damages when such use is repeated or willful. Regulatory standards for data collection, analysis, use, and stewardship can inform and complement generalist judges. Such regulation will not only provide guidance to …

The Role Of International Rules In Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Commercial Disputes, Tonya M. Evans

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] The concept of online dispute resolution (ODR) is not new. 1 But, with the advent of Web 3.0, the distributed web that facilitates pseudonymous and cross-border transactions via blockchain's distributed ledger technology, 2 the idea of, and pressing need for, appropriate dispute resolution models for blockchain-based disputes to support this novel system of distributed consensus and trust of which blockchain proponents boast, is a primary concern in rapid development. 3 The common goal of each project is to utilize smart contracts to facilitate "superior, quicker[,] and less expensive proceedings by eliminating so many of the tedious and protracted trappings …

Contracting Around The Hague Service Convention, Robin Effron, John F. Coyle, Maggie Gardner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Adr Loophole To Restrictive Non-Compete Agreements, Jad Itani

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This Comment considers a key question: do employers have a strategy to protect themselves if these restrictive states are restricting corporations from protecting their self-developed trade secrets? In doing so, Part II will discuss an approach that may allow employers to potentially circumvent the restrictive states. This can be achieved by requiring an employee to undergo private arbitration in a dispute with an employer—a strategy that has gained validity in light of the United States Supreme Court’s holding that upholds arbitration clauses even where significant public policy concerns exist. Specifically, an employer in a restrictive state could potentially enforce an …

A New Look At Contract Mistake Doctrine And Personal Injury Releases, Grace M. Giesel

Brandeis School of Law Faculty Scholarship

One might expect a court to look very skeptically when a party to a personal injury release asks a court to set aside the release. But many courts have reacted atypically when injured parties who have settled their claims have sought to have those releases set aside on the basis of a lack of understanding or knowledge about the injury. Absent facts supporting a claim of fraud or duress, injured parties have turned to the mistake doctrine for relief.

Turning Wisconn Valley Into The Next Silicon Valley: Reforming Wisconsin Non-Compete Law To Attract High-Tech Employers, Kelly Krause

Marquette Law Review

The July 2017 arrival of Taiwanese tech-giant Foxconn and the

establishment of the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park in Wisconsin

reflects a larger trend in the United States to reinvent the nation’s

manufacturing economy with high-tech production. High-tech employers have

substantial interests in retaining employees in order to protect their valuable

proprietary information and market share. Non-compete agreements, also

known as restrictive covenants or covenants not to compete, are often the legal

device used to secure these interests. This Comment argues that to attract and

retain employers in the tech industry, Wisconsin should reform its non-compete

law by adopting …

American V. British Rule: The Impact Of James G. Davis Construction Corp. V. Hrgm Corp. On Fee-Shifting Provisions In The Maryland And D.C. Area, Maxwell Terhar

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Singapore Convention And The Metamorphosis Of Contractual Litigation, Jean-Christophe Boulet

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This article addresses the grounds provided for in Article 5 of the Singapore Convention for the refusal of enforcement of a settlement agreement or for the refusal of a settlement agreement as evidence that the dispute has been resolved. It is divided into three sections. The first section briefly places these grounds in the context of the Singapore Convention as a whole as well as the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. The second section is devoted to a more detailed examination of the various grounds listed in Article 5 of the Convention, …

Online Dispute Resolution For Smart Contracts, Amy J. Schmitz, Colin Rule

Faculty Publications

Smart contracts built in the blockchain are quietly revolutionizing traditional transactions despite their questionable status under current law. At the same time, disputes regarding smart contracts are inevitable, and par-ties will need means for dealing with smart contract issues. This Article tackles this challenge, and proposes that parties turn to online dispute resolution (“ODR”) to efficiently and fairly resolve smart contract disputes. Furthermore, the Article acknowledges the benefits and challenges of current blockchain ODR start-ups, and proposes specific ideas for how designers could address those challenges and incorporate ODR to provide just resolutions that will not stymie efficiencies of smart …

Online Terms As In Terrorem Devices, Colin P. Marks

Faculty Works

Online shopping has quickly replaced the brick-and-mortar experience for a large portion of the consuming public. The online transaction itself is rote: browse items, add them to your cart, and check out. Somewhere along the way, the consumer is likely made aware of (or at least exposed to) the merchant's terms and conditions, via either a link or a pop-up box. Such terms and conditions have become so ubiquitous that most consumers would be hardpressed to find a merchant that doesn't try to impose them somewhere on their website. Though such terms and conditions are pervasive, most consumers do not …

Contracts Mattered As Much As Copyrights, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Scholars have begun to appreciate the fundamental role that contracts played in the development of copyrights. Contracts gave copyrights vitalilty. This article explores the network of book publishing contracts that formed the legal infrastructure for a pre-modern “internet” at the dawn of copyright law in Great Britain in the eighteenth century. Drawing on insights from archival research, the article shows how this network of copyright contracts advanced an important goal of copyright: the spread of ideas and information throughout all parts of society. Appreciating the historical significance of copyright contracts provides valuable context for modern debates about copyright policy. Indeed, …

Contracting For Human Rights: Looking To Version 2.0 Of The Aba Model Contract Clauses, Sarah Dadush

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Private Law Remedies, Human Rights, And Supply Contracts, Jennifer S. Martin

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Design And Conduct Negotiation Simulations In Contract Drafting, Naveen Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Police Should Protect Complainant Autonomy, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay does its work in, at least, three ways. First, it encourages better use of scarce public sector resources by calling for reform of the police complaint intake process. Next, this Essay identifies the causes of police complaint inefficiencies by critically-assessing how intake is done by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Lastly, it provides guidance about how to achieve CPD intake reform by better protecting complainant autonomy. Complainant autonomy, at least in this Essay, is defined as a real party in interest’s (i.e. an injured citizen’s) right to control how its allegations are framed by a nominal plaintiff (i.e. …

Inefficiency Of Specific Performance As A Contractual Remedy In Chinese Courts: An Empirical And Normative Analysis, Lei Chen, Larry A. Dimatteo

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article investigates the values and latent policies, which have shaped the development of Chinese law in the area of the availability of specific performance (SP) as a contractual remedy. The National People’s Congress (Legislature) and Supreme People’s Court in China have addressed the remedial structure of Chinese contract law, namely, the availability of the remedy of SP as opposed to the awarding of damages-only. The law is clear that the remedies of SP and damages are ordinary remedies that a claimant is free to choose between. The question that is confronted in this article is whether in practice the …

Contract Interpretation Enforcement Costs: An Empirical Study Of Textualism Versus Contextualism Conducted Via The West Key Number System, Joshua M. Silverstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article sets forth an empirical study of a central issue in the judicial and academic debate over the optimal method of contract interpretation: Whether “textualism” or “contextualism” best minimizes contract enforcement costs. The study measured enforcement costs in twelve ways. Under each of those measures, there was no statistically significant difference in the level of interpretation litigation between textualist and contextualist regimes. Accordingly, the study finds no support for either the textualist hypothesis that contextualism has higher enforcement costs or the contextualist counter-hypothesis that textualism has higher enforcement costs.

The study herein was conducted via the West Key Number …

Fingerprints: An Impressionistic And Empirical Evaluation Of Richard Posner’S Impact On Contract Law, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

Richard Posner’s retirement after 36 years on the federal bench presents an ideal opportunity to reflect on his sometimes controversial career as a scholar and a judge. Since his principal scholarly work, Economic Analysis of Law, has been cited in legal scholarship over 7500 times a good working hypothesis is that his impact on law has been substantial. This article considers his impact on contract law. Two lines of research were conducted: one line explores the impact of Judge Posner’s scholarly writings on judicial opinions; the other line examines the impact of his opinions on other courts.

The Private Law Critique Of International Investment Law, Julian Arato

Articles

This Article argues that investment treaties subtly constrain how nations organize their internal systems of private law, including laws of property, contracts, corporations, and intellectual property. Problematically, the treaties do so on a one-size-fits-all basis, disregarding the wide variation in values reflected in these domestic legal institutions. Investor-state dispute settlement exacerbates this tension, further distorting national private law arrangements. This hidden aspect of the system produces inefficiency, unfairness, and distributional inequities that have eluded the regime's critics and apologists alike.

To Recognize Or Not? Good Faith Under Nigerian Law Of Contract, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Unlike jurisdictions such as Canada and the United Kingdom, Nigerian courts have not engaged with the doctrine of good faith. Similarly, there is a dearth of academic scholarship that examines this aspect of the Nigerian law of contract. In this paper, I examine how the Nigerian courts have operationalized the common law of good faith in the performance of contracts. Rather than suggest that good faith as “an organizing principle” has an internally consistent meaning by which we can transplant the doctrine from one jurisdiction to another, or even apply the so-called duty of honest performance as enunciated by the …

Cutting Pension Rights For Public Workers: Don't Look To The Courts For Help, Ronald H. Rosenberg

Faculty Publications

Every day we rely on public employees to provide us with a broad range of services necessary to daily life. These workers include public school teachers, fire and police, emergency medical technicians, park rangers, nurses just to name a few. As public employees, these people work for local and state government and they are compensated by us for their services through the taxes we pay. In general, these are modestly paid workers who also receive pensions when they retire after many years of work. Following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, government retirement trust funds significantly lost value and their long-term …

Contract Damages, Moral Agency, And Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Jennifer Nadler

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper enters the dispute over the proper interpretation of the expectation measure of damages in contract law. Should damages be measured by the plaintiff’s financial loss or by the cost of acquiring a substitute performance (“cost of cure”)? I begin by presenting a moral (as opposed to an economic or a pragmatic) justification for the traditional contract principle that a plaintiff has a right to compensation for the financial loss flowing from breach but no right to performance. I do so by showing that implicit in the principle that the plaintiff has a right to compensation for financial loss …

Dartmouth College V. Woodward And The Structure Of Civil Society, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ideology And Argument Construction In Contract Law, Michael Fischl

Faculty Articles and Papers

I will offer an extended illustration of the demystification link here and will focus on promissory estoppel, a doctrine that receives sustained attention in the typical US Contracts class and has been the focus of a great deal of scholarship, critical and otherwise, for decades. Following this introduction, the essay proceeds in two parts. In Part II, I introduce promissory estoppel the way I do in my classes, contrasting mainstream, legal realist, and critical ‘stories’ about the history and role of the doctrine in American contract law. I warn my students – as I am warning readers here – that …

Decoding Smart Contracts: Technology, Legitimacy, & Legislative Uniformity, Jared Arcari

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Blockchain technology is increasingly permeating the everyday lives of countless people. Applications of the cutting-edge technology range from secured banking to tracking mortgage titles. A particular blockchain technology, dubbed “smart contracts,” has the potential to revolutionize how individuals and companies securely contract with each other. Smart contracts, however, are not widely employed, mainly because potential users are uncertain of their enforceability as contracts under existing state contract laws. Similar skepticism slowed the acceptance of electronic signatures in the late 1990s, but was resolved ultimately through a model uniform act recognizing electronic signatures’ effectiveness across interstate borders. This Note proposes a …

Art In The Age Of Contractual Negotiation, Christopher G. Bradley, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This paper explores the function and purpose of the Artist’s Contrast as a legal document—but not from the perspective of legal enforceability, which is how legal effectiveness is traditionally measured. Rather this paper tells the story of a document that relies upon hallmarks of law (legal language, formality, specificity, and so on) in order to express and attempt to consolidate particular views on artists, artworks, the collectors to whom they sell, and the markets in which they sell. This powerful connection inevitably continues past the moment of sale, and the Artist’s Contract can be read as an attempt to rearrange …