Contracts Commons^™

Critical Interventions: Toward An Expansive Equality Approach To The Doctrine Of Good Faith In Contract Law, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article argues that courts should use the doctrine of good faith in contract law to prohibit improper considerations of race in contract formation and performance, and should recognize good faith as a device for eliminating racial subordination that can function beyond the scope of conventional civil rights discourse. Although civil rights laws provide important remedies to victims of discrimination, the elimination of racial subordination cannot remain the exclusive domain of civil rights law. Rather, other substantive areas of law can and should incorporate expansive equality principles to achieve that end. For example, this article demonstrates how the implied obligation …

The (Pre) (As) Sumed "Consent" Of Commercial Binding Arbitration Contracts: An Empirical Study Of Attitudes And Expectations Of Transactional Lawyers, 36 J. Marshall L. Rev. 589 (2003), Celeste M. Hammond

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contractual Choice Of Law And The Prudential Foundations Of Appellate Review, David Frisch

Vanderbilt Law Review

Within the past decade, professional organizations interested in making the law better suited to commercial transactions have begun to advocate the proposition that contracting parties should have almost unlimited power to choose the law to govern their relationship. The new choice-of-law framework resulting from these reform efforts will provide parties with an expanded menu of legal regimes from which to choose when drafting their contract and, in turn, will lead to a more frequent use of choice-of-law clauses. Indeed, some have even suggested that omitting such a clause may soon become malpractice for the commercial lawyer. Given both the trend …

Blame It On Rio: Biodiscovery, Native Title, And Traditional Knowledge, Matthew Rimmer

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

This article examines the legal responses to protect traditional knowledge of biodiversity in the wake of the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity. It considers the relative merits of the inter- locking regimes of contract law, environmental law, intellectual property law, and native title law. Part 1 considers the natural drug discovery industry in Australia. In particular , it looks at the operations of Amrad, Astra Zeneca R & D, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. This section examines the key features of the draft regulations proposed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) - model contracts, …

The Fiction Of Freedom Of Contract - Nursing Home Admission Contract Arbitration Agreements: A Primer On Preserving The Right Of Access To Court Under Florida Law, Robert Hornstein

St. Thomas Law Review

The primary purpose of this article is to provide a litigation paradigm on how the use of compelled nursing home arbitration agreements in Florida can be successfully challenged and a patient's right of access to the courts preserved. This article includes an examination of the use of compelled arbitration agreements under Florida law and their treatment by the courts. It also includes an analysis of how Florida's courts have generally responded to the widespread use of arbitration provisions. Further, it contains a review of the defenses available under Florida law that can be used to defend against compelled arbitration provisions. …

Agreeing To Disagree: A Balanced Solution To Whether Parties May Contract For Expanded Judicial Review Beyond The Faa, 36 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1005 (2003), Anthony J. Longo

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond Words: An Empirical Study Of Context In Contract Creation, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

This article reports on an empirical study into how judges interpret contracts. In general, the study demonstrates that key participants do look to context for guidance on issues of contract creation. Part II summarizes the modem legal perspective on these questions, as stated in the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, as posited in the scholarly debate about relational contracts, and as exemplified in case law regarding employment contracts. Part III describes a study designed to capture the thinking on these questions of participants in an employment contract. Part IV presents the results obtained from respondents who represented the parties to the …

Accrued Financial Services, Inc. V. Prime Retail, Inc.: Resurrecting Barratry Imposes Detour On Road To Modernization Of Maryland Contracts Jurisprudence, Ross Q. Panko

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

You Asked For It, You Got It … Toy Yoda: Practical Jokes, Prizes, And Contract Law, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

For what seemed to be a simple contract dispute, Berry v. Gulf Coast Wings Inc. garnered an unusual amount of attention in both the legal and popular press. Former Hooters waitress Jodee Berry sued her ex-employer for breaching its promise to award a new Toyota to the winner of an April 2001 sales contest. Berry alleged that her manager, Jared Blair, told the waitresses at the Hooters where she worked at the time that whoever sold the most beer at each participating location during April 2001 would be entered in a drawing, the winner of which would receive a new …

Whose Deal Is It? Teaching About Structural Inequality By Teaching Contracts Transactionally, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

Although Scott Burnham and others have urged the use of more contracts to teach Contracts for some time,'9 it is safe to say that the majority of Contracts courses in the United States do not put actual contracts front and center. While particular phrases or provisions surely are referenced in the steady diet of appellate decisions that comprise the first-year course, those decisions very rarely include the actual contract at issue for study. Moreover, in the increased compression of the first year course," few professors believe they can justify the time for transactional exercises or simulations in the rush to …

The Sense And Nonsense Of Web Site Terms Of Use Agreements, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the purpose, use and enforceability of TOUs. In so doing it looks beyond the common question of whether TOUs are enforceable to ask whether and under what circumstances TOUs are necessary. This article explores whether the nature of the Internet is so different from the brick-and-mortar world that TOUs are needed for web sites but not for retail stores. A review of many of the existing TOUs reveals that major differences exist in the number and nature of their provisions. On one extreme are the TOUs of companies like Disney, Barnes and Noble and Amazon that apparently …

Red Owl's Legacy, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

In the early 1960s, Joseph Hoffman, a high school graduate, baker and father of seven, sought to obtain a Red Owl grocery store franchise in Wisconsin. He entered into negotiations with Red Owl Stores, Inc. after the franchisor assured him that the $18,000 he had to invest in the franchise was sufficient. Over the course of the negotiations, Red Owl encouraged Hoffman to sell his bakery, buy a small grocery store to gain experience in the grocery business, sell his grocery store three months later, and move his family to the desired location for his Red Owl franchise. The negotiations …

Contracts—Beating Them At Their Own Game: The Business Risk Doctrine And The Broadening Coverage Of Commercial General Liability Insurance—Thommes V. Milwaukee Insurance Co., Katherine J. Solon

William Mitchell Law Review

This note first examines the theory behind the business risk doctrine in analyzing CGL insurance. It then details the supreme court's holding in Thommes, followed by an analysis of that decision. Finally, the note concludes that, whatever problems may exist, the court has devised a manageable approach to CGL insurance coverage.

Energy Goods: Should Article 2 Of The Uniform Commercial Code Apply To Energy Sales In A Deregulated Environment, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 281 (2003), Koby Bailey

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Shackles Of Covenant Marriage: Who Holds The Keys To Wedlock, Chauncey E. Brummer

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contract Of Mutual (In)Difference: Government And The Humanitarian Apparatus In Contemporary Albania And Kosovo, Mariella Pandolfi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Globalization and Governance: The Prospects for Democracy, Symposium

Anticipatory Repudiation Of Letters Of Credit, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

Letters of credit play a vital role in financing international transactions, and are becoming increasingly popular domestically as substitutes for more traditional secured financing. As such, they deserve substantially more scholarly attention than they receive outside of specialized treatises and banking trade publications. Moreover, as unilateral promises by issuers of the letters of credit to pay money to their beneficiaries, the fact that Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code and pre-UCC common law recognize the right of a beneficiary to sue for anticipatory repudiation is at odds with the prevailing rule in this country that a promisee cannot sue …

Legal Considerations For Sponsorship Contracts Of Olympic Athletes, Leigh Augustine-Schlossinger

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Correctional Services Corporation V. Malesko: Unmasking The Implied Damage Remedy, Matthew G. Mazefsky

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corrective Justice In Contract Law: Is There A Case For Punitive Damages?, Curtis Bridgeman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Twentieth-century American legal theory has been dominated by utilitarian and economic approaches. As a result, scholarly analyses of contract and tort law have focused on the public effects of the resolution of private disputes. But in the last twenty years or so justice has undergone a renaissance as so-called corrective-justice theorists have tried to shift the discussion in private law back to the relationships between individual parties. Tort law has been a particularly fertile ground for corrective-justice theorists, and a lively debate has developed about what the best corrective-justice account of tort law would look like.

By contrast, comparatively little …

Closing The Deal In Contracts: Introducing Transactional Skills In The First Year, David Snyder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Nonmaterial Misrepresentation: Damages, Rescission, And The Possibility Of Efficient Fraud, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Buried in the details of legal doctrine governing misrepresentation is a remedial anomaly that raises some interesting questions about how law should deal with moral wrongs such as fraud. We tend to think of deliberate deception--fraud--as a grave moral wrong. At least, we think of deception as gravely wrong when the deceiver's objective is not to avert harm or spare feelings, but to obtain someone's money or goods. Deception denies the autonomy of the person deceived and undermines the foundation of trust in human interaction. The law, however, does not penalize every instance of fraud. Moreover, the standards governing when …

Contract Theory And The Limits Of Contract Law, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law has neither a complete descriptive theory, explaining what the law is, nor a complete normative theory, explaining what the law should be. These gaps are unsurprising given the traditional definition of contract as embracing all promises that the law will enforce. Even a theory of contract law that focuses only on the enforcement of bargains must still consider the entire continuum from standard form contracts between firms and consumers to commercial contracts among businesses. No descriptive theory has yet explained a law of contract that comprehends such a broad domain. Normative theories that are grounded in a single …

A Theory Of Self-Enforcing Indefinite Agreements, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

One of the core principles of contract law is the requirement of definiteness. Conventional wisdom holds, however, that the indefiniteness doctrine is largely ignored by courts. In this Article, Professor Scott examines the contemporary case law on indefinite contracts and his review yields three striking findings. First, there is a surprisingly high volume of litigation. Second, the indefiniteness doctrine lives on in the common law of contracts. Third, a large number of the indefiniteness cases involve contracts that are "deliberately" incomplete – that is, parties have declined to condition performance on available, verifiable measures that could be specified in the …

Sales, Carolyn L. Dessin, Keith A. Rowley, Robyn L. Meadows, Larry T. Garvin

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article provides a comprehensive survey of significant developments in sales law under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) during the year 2002. The authors analyze key judicial decisions that interpret and apply various provisions of Article 2, covering topics such as contract formation, the statute of frauds, warranties, performance, remedies, and risk of loss. By examining these cases, the article offers insights into how courts are shaping the landscape of sales law, highlighting trends and emerging issues that practitioners and scholars should be aware of.

Annual Survey Of Oklahoma Contract, Consumer, And Commercial Law: 2000-2002, Fred H. Miller

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contracts Of Convenience: Preventing Employers From Unilaterally Modifying Promises Made In Employee Handbooks, Brian T. Kohn

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Buyer's Regret" No Longer: Drafting Effective Mac Clauses In A Post-Ibp Environment, Sherri L. Toub

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Renegotiation And Adaptation Of International Investment Contracts, Klaus P. Berger

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In modern-day international investment practice, especially in connection with the exploitation of natural resources, Production Sharing Agreements have come to take over the role of the classic concession agreement. Like their predecessors, these contracts are particularly vulnerable to disturbances in the commercial balance agreed to, or assumed by, the parties at the conclusion of the contract. This vulnerability has three primary causes.

First, these are classic examples of long term contracts. In the petroleum industry, the commitment of significant capital for exploration, particularly in development, and the assumption of considerable risk, particularly in exploration, require contracts covering up to and …

Renegotiation And Adaptation Clauses In Investment Contracts, Revisited, John Y. Gotanda

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Professor Dr. Klaus Berger, in Renegotiation and Adaptation of International Investment Contracts: The Role of Contract Drafters and Arbitrators, proposes that international investment contracts include a clause allowing the parties to renegotiate the terms of their contract if certain events take place.' If they are unable to reach an agreement, Professor Berger advocates that the parties agree to permit an arbitral tribunal to modify the terms of the contract to restore the economic equilibrium assumed by the parties when they concluded the agreement. Although commentators have often championed these clauses, private parties involved in international transactions have included them infrequently. …