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Articles 4021 - 4050 of 7561

Full-Text Articles in Contracts

Contractual Enforcement Institutions And The Structure Of Information, Avery W. Katz Jan 2008

Contractual Enforcement Institutions And The Structure Of Information, Avery W. Katz

Faculty Scholarship

Many economic writers on contract theory have assumed that legal institutions are simply unable to do the job of enforcement, and have thus attempted to devise arrangements that motivate the parties to keep their commitments even though a government tribunal would be unable to tell whether they had performed. But non-legal enforcement mechanisms operate both as substitutes and complements for legal mechanisms (and as substitutes and complements for each other). This essay sketches how parties should choose among available enforcement mechanisms, based on the costs of information and other transaction costs.

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Cleaning Up Lake River, Victor P. Goldberg Jan 2008

Cleaning Up Lake River, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

A casebook favorite for exploring the liquid dated damage/penalty clause distinction is Lake River Corp. v. Carborundum Co. in which Judge Posner found a minimum quantity clause to be an unenforceable penalty clause. In this paper I argue that the case was framed improperly. Had the litigators recognized that the contract afforded one party an option, the result should have been different. The contract was for the provision of a service – setting aside capacity – which was valuable to the buyer and costly for the seller to provide. The primary purpose of the minimum quantity clause was the pricing …

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From Langdell To Law And Economics: Two Conceptions Of Stare Decisis In Contract Law And Theory, Jody S. Kraus Jan 2008

From Langdell To Law And Economics: Two Conceptions Of Stare Decisis In Contract Law And Theory, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

In his classic monograph, The Death of Contract, Grant Gilmore argued that Christopher Columbus Langdell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Samuel Williston trumped up the legal credentials for their classical bargain theory of contract law. Gilmore's analysis has been subjected to extensive criticism, but its specific, sustained, and fundamental charge that the bargain theory was based on a fraudulent misrepresentation of precedential authority has never been questioned. In this Essay, I argue that Gilmore's case against the classical theorists rests on the suppressed premise that the precedential authority of cases resides in the express judicial reasoning used to decide them. In …

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Market Damages, Efficient Contracting, And The Economic Waste Fallacy, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott Jan 2008

Market Damages, Efficient Contracting, And The Economic Waste Fallacy, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Market damages are the best default rule when parties trade in thick markets: They induce parties to contract efficiently and to trade if and only if trade is efficient, and they do not create ex ante inefficiencies. Courts commonly overlook these virtues, however, when promisors bundle services that are not separately priced. For example, a promisor may agree to pay royalties on a mining lease and later to restore the promisee's property. When the cost of completion is large relative to the "market delta " – the increase in market value – courts concerned with avoiding "economic waste" limit the …

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Just One Click: The Reality Of Internet Retail Contracting, Ronald J. Mann, Travis Siebeneicher Jan 2008

Just One Click: The Reality Of Internet Retail Contracting, Ronald J. Mann, Travis Siebeneicher

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the enforceability and presence of pro-seller contract terms in internet retail contracts. Analyzing case law on internet contract enforceability and a survey of 500 firms'websites, it demonstrates that even the enforceability of many internet contracts is questionable. It then presents new data that suggest that the prevalence of pro-seller contract terms is far less than usually assumed. It suggests that the benefit of making these terms enforceable is outweighed by the loss of user friendliness required for the necessary interface changes. Finally, it uses fresh statistical analyses to determine what relationship, if any, exists between enforceability, pro-seller …

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Incidental Findings: A Common Law Approach, Stacey A. Tovino Jan 2008

Incidental Findings: A Common Law Approach, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Federal regulations governing human subjects research do not address key questions raised by incidental neuroimaging findings, including the scope of a researcher’s disclosure with respect to the possibility of incidental findings and the question whether a researcher has an affirmative legal duty to seek, detect, and report incidental findings. The scope of researcher duties may, however, be mapped with reference to common law doctrine, including fiduciary, tort, contract, and bailment theories of liability.

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After The Battle Of The Forms, Francis J. Mootz Iii Jan 2008

After The Battle Of The Forms, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Commercial parties continue to fight the battle of the forms, but electronic contracting is quickly rendering this practice obsolete. In this article I assess the legal landscape for commercial parties after the battle of the forms. In Section I, I briefly describe the (relatively) settled law under U.C.C. § 2-207. I then describe how these rules permit commercial parties to erect a force-field to protect themselves from being subjected to unwanted terms, and the developments in web-based contracting and recent case law applying contract formation principles to electronic contracting. Finally, I discuss how the growth of electronic contracting will eliminate …

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Merger To Monopoly To Serve A Single Buyer: Comment, Jonathan Baker Jan 2008

Merger To Monopoly To Serve A Single Buyer: Comment, Jonathan Baker

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

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Friends As Fiduciaries, Ethan J. Leib Jan 2008

Friends As Fiduciaries, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the law of fiduciary duties provides a good framework for friends to understand their duties to one another better, gives courts a useful set of rhetorical and analytical tools to employ when they are forced to entertain disputes that arise between close friends, and, finally, can help direct courts to furnish betrayed friends certain kinds of remedies that are most appropriate for achieving justice within that dispute context. This is not the first Article to make an effort to expand the reach of the fiduciary concept into new sorts of relationships that are not always considered …

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"Arbitration As A Final Award: Challenges And Enforcement" Published As Chapter 10 In International Sales Law And Arbitration: Problems, Cases, And Commentary, Jack M. Graves, Joseph F. Morrissey Jan 2008

"Arbitration As A Final Award: Challenges And Enforcement" Published As Chapter 10 In International Sales Law And Arbitration: Problems, Cases, And Commentary, Jack M. Graves, Joseph F. Morrissey

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

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Contracting Out Of Process, Contracting Out Of Corporate Accountability: An Argument Against Enforcement Of Pre-Dispute Limits On Process, Meredith R. Miller Jan 2008

Contracting Out Of Process, Contracting Out Of Corporate Accountability: An Argument Against Enforcement Of Pre-Dispute Limits On Process, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

There have been many well-articulated and convincing critiques aimed at mandatory arbitration. Indeed, presently before Congress is proposed legislation titled the Arbitration Fairness Act, that would ban pre-dispute arbitration in the consumer, franchise and employment contexts. However, maligned as the plaintiff bar's pro-lawsuit legislation, the Arbitration Fairness Act is predicted to have very little chance of enactment. Consequently, across varying industries, the pre-dispute arbitration regime endures unheedingly. Thus, this Article sets aside the arguments aimed generally at pre-dispute arbitration clauses and, instead, sets its sights on some of the terms that seem to arise in such clauses. The focus here …

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Wilfulness Versus Expectation: A Promise-Based Defense Of Wilfull Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman Jan 2008

Wilfulness Versus Expectation: A Promise-Based Defense Of Wilfull Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman

Faculty Scholarship

Willful breach doctrine should be a major embarrassment to contract law. If the default remedy for breach is expectation damages designed to put the injured promisee in the position she would have been in if the contract had been performed, then the promisor's behavior-the reason for the breach-looks to be irrelevant in assessing damages. And yet the cases are full of references to "willful" breaches, which seem often to be treated more harshly than ordinary ones based on the promisor's bad/willful conduct. Our explanation is that willful breaches are best understood as those that should be prevented or deterred because …

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Disney Examined; A Case Study In Corporate Governance And Ceo Succession, Lawrence Lederman Jan 2008

Disney Examined; A Case Study In Corporate Governance And Ceo Succession, Lawrence Lederman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

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Jung V. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Zachary Kerner Jan 2008

Jung V. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Zachary Kerner

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

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False Consensus Bias In Contract Interpretation, Lawrence Solan, Terri Rosenblatt, Daniel Osherson Jan 2008

False Consensus Bias In Contract Interpretation, Lawrence Solan, Terri Rosenblatt, Daniel Osherson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Possibility Of Plain Meaning: Wittgenstein And The Contract Precedents, Val D. Ricks Jan 2008

Possibility Of Plain Meaning: Wittgenstein And The Contract Precedents, Val D. Ricks

Cleveland State Law Review

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. G.W. Thomas Drayage & Rigging Co and In re Soper's Estate claim that plain meaning in contract law is impossible. This claim is left irrefuted in the casebooks and contract law literature, Part I notes, and in most teaching of contract law. The consequence is that students are taught that plain meaning is impossible. A startling implication of this conclusion, as Part I explains, is that the majority of U.S. courts, which hold to the plain meaning rule, are relying on a fiction. But the claim that plain meaning is impossible is false, as …

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Are All Contracts Alike?, Margaret F. Brinig Jan 2008

Are All Contracts Alike?, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

This Article compares two sets of contracts that are structurally and contextually similar. They originate in two quite different fields, however: the commercial arena and the family. The contracts come from two separate empirical investigations. The first investigation studied 131 telecommunication interconnection agreements made between SBC Communications, Inc. ("SBC") and various local phone companies in Michigan beginning in 1998. The second investigation involved 141 divorce cases granted in 1998 in Johnson County, Iowa, all of which involved children, and 130 of which involved contracts, or "stipulations" as they are called locally. Though each empirical project has been described separately elsewhere, …

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How To Repair Unconscionable Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar Dec 2007

How To Repair Unconscionable Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Several doctrines of contract law allow courts to strike down excessively one-sided terms. A large literature explored which terms should be viewed as excessive, but a related question is often ignored—what provision should replace the vacated excessive term? This paper begins by suggesting that there are three competing criteria for a replacement provision: (1) the most reasonable term; (2) a punitive term, strongly unfavorable to the overreaching party; and (3) the maximally tolerable term. The paper explores in depth the third criterion—the maximally tolerable term—under which the excessive term is reduced merely to the highest level that the law considers …

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Vol. Ix, Tab 47 - Ex. 10 - Document "Rosetta Stone Affiliate Overview - Nov. 29, 2007, Rosetta Stone Nov 2007

Vol. Ix, Tab 47 - Ex. 10 - Document "Rosetta Stone Affiliate Overview - Nov. 29, 2007, Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

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Do Juries Add Value? Evidence From An Empirical Study Of Jury Trial Waiver Clauses In Large Corporate Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller Nov 2007

Do Juries Add Value? Evidence From An Empirical Study Of Jury Trial Waiver Clauses In Large Corporate Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We study jury trial waivers in a data set of 2,816 contracts contained as exhibits in Form 8-K filings by reporting corporations during 2002. Because these contracts are associated with events deemed material to the financial condition of SEC-reporting firms, they likely are carefully negotiated by sophisticated, well-informed parties and thus provide presumptive evidence about the value associated with the availability of jury trials. A minority of contracts, about 20 percent, waived jury trials. An additional 9 percent of contracts had arbitration clauses that effectively preclude jury trials though the reason for arbitration clauses need not specifically relate to juries. …

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Labor And Employment Law, W. David Paxton, Gregory R. Hunt Nov 2007

Labor And Employment Law, W. David Paxton, Gregory R. Hunt

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Using The Unidroit Principles To Fill Gaps In The Cisg, John Y. Gotanda Oct 2007

Using The Unidroit Principles To Fill Gaps In The Cisg, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

The United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) sets forth only a basic framework for the recovery of damages, thereby giving a court of tribunal broad authority to determine an aggrieved party’s loss based on circumstances of the particular case. Unfortunately, the lack of specificity has resulted in much litigation, and seemingly conflicting results. To remedy this problem, some have argued that the gaps in the CISG damages provisions should be filled with the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. In this paper, I argue that the gap-filling rules of CISG preclude the UNIDROIT Principles from being …

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Consideration Of 'Contracting Culture' In Enforcing Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz Oct 2007

Consideration Of 'Contracting Culture' In Enforcing Arbitration Provisions, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

The Federal Arbitration Act mandates strict and uniform enforcement of standardized pre-dispute arbitration provisions. This may not be proper, however, in light of the importance of context with respect to these provisions. This Article therefore seeks to remind courts of the importance of exchange context by proposing a "contracting culture" continuum for enforcing these arbitration provisions that acknowledges the impacts of these provisions in a particular communal context. "Contracting culture" encompasses economic and non-economic relational factors that impact dispute resolution agreements, but go beyond common conceptions of "culture" focused on ethnicity, nationality, or religion. It also explores beyond the primary …

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Corporate Social Accountability Standards In The Global Supply Chain: Resistance, Reconsideration, And Resolution In China, Li-Wen Lin Oct 2007

Corporate Social Accountability Standards In The Global Supply Chain: Resistance, Reconsideration, And Resolution In China, Li-Wen Lin

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

This Article provides a view on corporate social accountability standards from a Chinese perspective, a slightly different angle from that of legal scholars in the United States. The legal literature in the United States typically only focuses on the importance and effectiveness of corporate social accountability standards to regulate the conduct of multinational companies in the era of globalization. However, the views of the outsourced companies in the developing countries, on which the multinational companies impose the standards, have seldom received attention. This Article tries to fill this void by examining the situation in China. As shown in this Article, …

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The Failure Of The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods And A Proposal For A New Uniform Global Code In International Sales Law, Christopher Sheaffer Oct 2007

The Failure Of The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods And A Proposal For A New Uniform Global Code In International Sales Law, Christopher Sheaffer

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note critiques the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) for failing to achieve its goal of creating a uniform international sales law due to ambiguities, inconsistent judicial interpretations, and language discrepancies. It proposes the development of a new Global Code to address these shortcomings, emphasizing the need for clearer guidelines, a unified interpretation framework, and mechanisms to ensure consistency across jurisdictions.

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A Primer On Electronic Contracting And Transactions In North Carolina, Richard A. Lord Oct 2007

A Primer On Electronic Contracting And Transactions In North Carolina, Richard A. Lord

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

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"It Is Much Easier To Find Fault With Others, Than To Be Faultless Ourselves": Contributory Negligence As A Bar To A Claim For Breach Of The Implied Warranty Of Merchantability, William B. L. Little Oct 2007

"It Is Much Easier To Find Fault With Others, Than To Be Faultless Ourselves": Contributory Negligence As A Bar To A Claim For Breach Of The Implied Warranty Of Merchantability, William B. L. Little

Campbell Law Review

To better understand the policy underpinnings of the statutory bar of certain implied warranty merchantability claims, this Article first reviews the origins and the continued vibrancy of the doctrine of contributory negligence in North Carolina. The doctrine is then examined in the context of North Carolina's enactment of the Products Liability Act and the doctrine's applicability to the implied warranty of merchantability.

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Renegotiations And Settlements: Dr. Pangloss's Notes On The Margins Of David Campbell's Papers, Stewart Macaulay Oct 2007

Renegotiations And Settlements: Dr. Pangloss's Notes On The Margins Of David Campbell's Papers, Stewart Macaulay

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Summary Of Anvui, Llc V. G.L. Dragon, Llc, 123 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 25, Kelly Walker Jul 2007

Summary Of Anvui, Llc V. G.L. Dragon, Llc, 123 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 25, Kelly Walker

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

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Consumer Protection And Social Methods Of Continental And Anglo-American Contract Law And The Transnational Outlook, Andreas Maurer Jul 2007

Consumer Protection And Social Methods Of Continental And Anglo-American Contract Law And The Transnational Outlook, Andreas Maurer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Debates over the content of recent EU directives and U.S. statutory amendments related to consumer protection highlight the importance of such regulation. Criticism calling for a return to freedom of contract in both regions reflects a tension between social ideals related to equality between private parties, and a deep distrust of state intervention and market regulation. With the rise of private sources for transnational commercial standards and practices, there is an opportunity for states to facilitate selfregulation in lieu of producing public substantive regulations. This approach seems to satisfy a well-established need for consumer protection without exacerbating government intervention in …

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