Thursday, May 16, 2013
New in Print
Sean M. Collins and R. Mark Isaac, Holdout: Existence, Information, and Contingent Contracting. 55 J.L. & Econ. 793 (2012)
Christine Spinella Davis,et al., Recent Developments in Business Litigation, 48 Tort Trial & Ins. Prac. L.J. 115 (2012)
Robert W. Emerson and Uri Benoliel, Are Franchisees Well-Informed? Revisiting the Debate over Franchise Relationship Laws. 76 Alb. L. Rev. 193-216 (2012/2013)
Orit Gan, Contractual Duress and Relations of Power, 36 Harv. J. L. & Gender 171 (2013)
Orit Gan, Promissory Estoppel: A Call for a More Inclusive Contract Law, 16 J. Gender, Race & Justice 47 (2013)
David Hricik, Dear Lawyer: If You Decide It's Not Economical to Represent Me, You Can Fire Me As Your Contingent Fee Client, but I Agree I Will Still Owe You a Fee, 64 Mercer L. Rev. 363 (2013)
Joseph F. Morrissey, A Contractarian Critique of Citizens United, 15 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 765 (2013)
Arthur J. Park, What to Reasonably Expect in the Coming Years from the Reasonable Expectations of the Insured Doctrine, 49 Willamette L. Rev. 165 (2012)
[JT]
May 16, 2013 in Recent Scholarship | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Boilerplate Symposium V: Ethan Leib on the Fetishization of Consent
This is the fifth in a series of posts reviewing Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law.
Ethan Leib s Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and is the author of What is the Relational Theory of Consumer Form Contract?, in Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay: On the Empirical and the Lyrical 259 (Jean Braucher, John Kidwell & William Whitford eds., Hart Publishing 2013)
People tend to begin with praise. In this case, it isn’t just throat-clearing. Although one could be forgiven for thinking that the subject of consumer form contracts has been mined to death, much impresses in Peggy Radin’s Boilerplate. Although I don’t agree with all of them, here are just a few of the book’s productive interventions:
- Radin invites us to consider whether tort law rather than contract law would make better sense of the consumer form contract gone wrong in which someone is harmed, “out of the blue, by the unexpected actions of another” (23);
- Radin invites us to think about how complicity with certain types of boilerplate that divests important procedural and substantive rights has had the systematic effect of converting property rules to liability rules, unilaterally priced by form drafters (75);
- Radin questions whether we should be allowing contract to undermine the value of “fair use” of intellectual property or the value of free expression, since some seemingly enforceable boilerplate purports to limit consumers’ permission to use or criticize the products they buy (172-76);
- Radin reminds us that when consumers’ reasonable expectations are that they will be exploited by boilerplate, the judicial doctrine allowing enforcement of only consumers’ “reasonable expectations” will prove inadequate in addressing the problems with boilerplate (highlighting the ambiguity in the doctrine between positive and normative expectations) (85);
- Radin provokes us by characterizing consumer form contracts as “sturdy indefensibles:” we might need to use them even though they don’t fit the “‘grammar’ of the legal infrastructure of contract law” (143); and
- Radin argues that boilerplate should be judged based on the nature of the right involved, the quality of consent provided by those bound, and the dissemination of the right that is purportedly infringed (155).
And there are more pearls for
readers, too.
But I had one quite basic problem with the book, which cuts to the very core of Radin’s approach.
Most importantly, she really tries to train the reader not to consider boilerplate instruments as actually contractual. Indeed, if her editor had allowed it, she might very well have used scare quotes throughout the whole book (rather than just the beginning) to highlight that consumer form contracts with boilerplate are not really contracts. The reason for their exclusion from the world of contract: because of the routine absence of consent in transactions using boilerplate. It is the lack of consent (or the severely attenuated consent) in consumer form contracting which underwrites her claim that boilerplate contributes to “normative [and] democratic degradation,” a central trope that recurs throughout the book.
Admittedly, it seems intuitive to root contract in consent. The liberal theory of autonomy to which many versions of contract theory owe their genesis promotes consent as a principal virtue. So it is no surprise that Radin seeks to maintain the liberal theory of autonomy and contract with it.
But there is a whiff of fetishizing of consent in Radin’s rendering. Absence and attenuation of consent is everywhere in the transactional world of contract: in employment, long-term corporate relationships, in franchises, in marriage. Contract is a multifarious enterprise that ultimately governs many modalities of exchange. Radin surely attempts to explore the fine line between the consensual and non-consensual. But excluding a huge portion of voluntary exchange from the domain of contract seems unlikely to be true to the rich practice that has, from time immemorial, been a method of channeling and regulating complex relationships in which transactions occur. I fear a “purer” contract – one without boilerplate and one which squeezes out all attenuated consent – will ultimately leave us with a more ideological product, one that undergirds, reinforces, and grows out of a libertarian rather than a liberal theory of autonomy. And that may lead to more substantial normative degradation than would fighting bad contracts with some contract law.
[Posted, on behalf of Ethan Leib, by JT]
May 15, 2013 in Books, Commentary, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Boilerplate Symposium IV: David Horton on Mass Arbitration and Democratic Degradation
This is the fourth in a series of posts reviewing Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law.
David Horton is Acting Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law.
One of Boilerplate’s most provocative claims is that mass contracting causes “democratic degradation.” To be sure, this idea is not entirely new. In 1931, Karl Llewellyn called standard forms “the exercise of unofficial government”; forty years later, W. David Slawson analogized to administrative law and argued that adhesive terms, like rules promulgated by unelected bureaucrats, suffer from a democracy deficit. However, with the rise of public choice theory—which blurs the line between public and private lawmaking by conceptualizing statutes as “deals” between politicians and interest groups—these critiques have all but vanished. Professor Radin seeks to reinvigorate them. She contends that boilerplate replaces “the law of the state with the ‘law’ of the firm” and therefore undermines our commitment to representative democracy (p. 16).
I’m particularly interested in how Professor Radin’s democratic
degradation thesis plays out in the field of consumer and employment
arbitration. (For whatever it’s worth,
I’ve explored similar issues here and here, and
in my forthcoming review of
Boilerplate). Of course, unlike other controversial fine
print terms, arbitration clauses can claim to have a democratic pedigree:
Congress passed the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925 to encourage the use of
private dispute resolution.
Nevertheless, it is widely accepted—even among the Justices—that the
FAA’s current musculature is “an
edifice of [the Court’s] own creation.”
In addition, the saturation of
mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses—at least
among major companies in certain industries—rivals traditional lawmaking in
its scale. For instance, the class
arbitration waiver in AT&T’s wireless service contract binds more customers
than the combined populations of California, Texas, New York, and Florida. Thus, to borrow from Professor Slawson, if by
making “law” we
mean creating or altering enforceable rights or duties, then companies make
more law in a day by projecting arbitration across the economy than Congress
makes in a year.
Is this spectacular display of private power legitimate? Professor Radin suggests that it’s not. She notes that “most people don’t know what arbitration is” and that arbitrators “are widely believed to be more favorable to businesses” (p. 4). Yet a skeptical reader might push back. What if, as the Court has repeatedly declared, the bare decision to resolve a dispute in the arbitral forum does not affect its outcome? Arguably, then mass arbitration is an elegant shortcut to the meandering path of litigation. Moreover, there are safeguards against drafter overreaching. Courts can invalidate one-sided arbitration clauses under the contract defense of unconscionability. Likewise, the vindication of rights doctrine entitles plaintiffs to a judicial forum if they prove that they can’t effectively vindicate federal statutory claims in arbitration. Before we condemn mass arbitration as do-it-yourself law reform, shouldn’t we insist on evidence that it deprives consumers and employees of substantive rights?
The rejoinder to this rejoinder can be found in the Court’s recent jurisprudence. In AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Court held that class arbitration waivers must be enforced even if small-value consumer protection claims will “slip through the legal system.” Thus, in perhaps the most fraught context in all civil litigation—the class action—the Court has disavowed the principle that the switch to an arbitral forum is outcome-neutral. It has allowed drafters to engage in aggregate contracting—a practice that Professor Radin persuasively argues is not “contracting” at all—while denying adherents the ability to aggregate claims. And in the pending case of American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, the Court is expected to extend Concepcion and mandate bilateral arbitration of federal antitrust claims even though the cost of expert fees alone greatly exceeds any individual plaintiff’s potential recovery. Just as Professor Radin contends, the casualties of this quiet revolution will be “rights that are granted through democratic processes” (pg. 16).[Posted, on David Horton's behalf, by JT]
May 15, 2013 in Books, Commentary, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Weekly Top Tens from the Social Science Research Network
RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days)
TOP 10 Papers for Journal of LSN: Contracts (Topic) 
March 9, 2013 to May 8, 2013
RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days)
TOP 10 Papers for Journal of Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal
March 9, 2013 to May 8, 2013
[JT]
May 14, 2013 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Boilerplate Symposium III: Andrew Gold, Is Boilerplate Contractual?
This is the third in a series of posts reviewing Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law.
Andrew Gold is a Professor of Law at the DePaul University College of Law.
Margaret Jane Radin’s new book, Boilerplate, is an outstanding contribution to the literature on contract theory and policy. In this review, I will focus on her analysis of consent, and in particular what it means to have consent for purposes of contract theory. For the most part, my concern will be conceptual, and not normative. This conceptual focus has normative implications, however. Radin argues that tort law is an appropriate means to regulate mass market boilerplate, in part because she believes that boilerplate is not properly conceptualized in contract terms. As she concludes: “it would be better to stop referring to boilerplate as contractual, because of its lack of fit with contract theory and with the basic principles of the legal system regarding what a contract is and what a contract is for.” (Radin, Boilerplate, at 242) This claim appears to be grounded in the vital role consent plays in contract theory. I share the view that consent is vital to contracts, but I am less sure that boilerplate should be seen as non-contractual.
As Radin indicates, boilerplate involves a spectrum of cases. At one end of the spectrum are the “sheer ignorance” cases. In these circumstances, the hapless consumer discovers after the fact that he or she is supposed to have entered a contract. Yet the consumer has no idea that this was happening at the time the contract was supposedly entered into. (Id. at 21-23) A good example is a purported agreement which states, at the bottom of the page, “‘Upon reading this page, you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions.’” (Id. at 13) There is no ready way to square these cases with standard views of consent, and I entirely agree with Radin that they are problematic. It is questionable whether they should properly be called contracts. With that in mind, let’s bracket the sheer ignorance cases.
Suppose, instead, that we consider
another case – the online consumer who has been presented with detailed terms
and clicked “I agree,” thus purportedly entering into a boilerplate contract. Very often, the consumer has not read the
terms when clicking “I agree,” and would not fully understand them if they had
been read. This is apparently not a
sheer ignorance case as Radin defines that category. Can these cases be understood in terms of contractual
consent? Maybe not, if consent means
informed consent. At times, Radin seems
to mean informed consent, as when she suggests that information asymmetry would
render it problematic to assimilate clicking “I agree” to what she calls “the
ordinary conception of consent”. (Id. at
25) Yet it is highly debatable whether
consent means informed consent, outside of those limited areas in which the law
goes out of its way to insist on informed consent (e.g., the provision of medical services). And there is no indication that contract
theory relies on the idea of informed consent as it is usually applied.
Assuming informed consent is not the standard, there are a variety of fact patterns which suggest that clicking “I agree” can implicate consent. Randy Barnett has offered a compelling example of this type. He describes a promise based on a sealed envelope:
Suppose I say to my dearest friend, “Whatever it is you want me to do, write it down and put it into a sealed envelope, and I will do it for you.” Is it categorically impossible to make such a promise? Is there something incoherent about committing oneself to perform an act the nature of which one does not know and will only learn later?
(Randy E. Barnett, Consenting to Form Contracts, 71 Fordham L. Rev. 627, 636 (2002).) This is a quite plausible case of consent – full-fledged consent – and this would be so even if consent is understood in subjective terms. It also has important implications for the present inquiry. It suggests that not knowing precisely what one has consented to is not a per se bar to consent.
Barnett recognizes an important limit on the envelope example. There are cases where a promisor could reasonably say: “‘while I did agree to be bound by terms I did not read, I did not agree to that.’” (Id. at 637) Radically unexpected terms would not have been consented to in a case like the envelope case. A similar limit seems to apply in the case of clicking “I agree” with respect to unread boilerplate.
Radin raises several concerns with a focus on expectations. She suggests that expectation-based approaches will not make for a predictable jurisprudence. (Radin, supra, at 85) That may be right, although this is an empirical question. But the possibility that courts are not institutionally well-situated to assess the unexpectedness of contract terms is not an argument that addresses the conceptual question at issue. It does not tell us whether we have consent for contract theory purposes. Instead, it is an institutional argument regarding good legal policy.
Another response draws our attention to the distinction between empirical expectations and a separate category, normative expectations. The argument here is that we have an ambiguity between expectations as they may exist among contracting parties (the empirical kind), and expectations in the sense of “the just practices that a citizen has a right to expect” (the normative kind). (Id.) There are notable and interesting differences between the two types of expectations, and the book offers important insights by drawing our attention to this issue. In fact, I’m sympathetic to Radin’s concern that empirical and normative expectations can be mixed together in contracts jurisprudence. Courts may look to either sense of expectations, and the jurisprudence may become unpredictable. But again, this concern does not tell us whether we have consent for contract theory purposes. This too is an argument regarding good legal policy.
Radin also offers a further argument concerning the different views on contractual consent. She suggests that the meaning of clicking “I agree” is “more analogous to a contested concept.” (Id. at 90) This could raise doubts as to which terms parties have consented to. It could also raise doubts that any consent exists at all. The two situations need not coincide. While the scope of consent could be very uncertain as a matter of objective meaning, this may not mean that people who click on “I agree” have no idea they are agreeing to anything at all. Whether there is any recognized objective meaning to clicking “I agree” is again an empirical question, and it may vary by community. Depending on context, I suspect that if you ask online consumers whether they have agreed to anything after clicking “I agree” when confronted by a list of terms, many would think they had agreed to something. (Of course, it might be something far less than the content which the firm would hope to cover with their contract!)
None of this is to say that Radin is wrong in her policy prescriptions. My concern, as noted at the outset, is conceptual. Once we bracket sheer ignorance cases, it is far from clear that mass-market boilerplate falls outside of the consent requirement that underpins much contract theory. Radin has many other reasons to suggest changes to our legal regime, and I am hopeful that her work will trigger further discussion of the concerns she raises. Yet it is one thing to say that boilerplate should be regulated in various ways, and another thing altogether to say that it is not contractual. With that caveat, this book draws our attention to a variety of important consent-related problems. Boilerplate is a very important contribution to existing debates, and it should be read by anyone interested in understanding the current state of contract law and its potential for reform.
[Posted, on Andrew Gold's behalf, by JT]May 14, 2013 in Books, Commentary, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Boilerplate Symposium II: Theresa Amato on Remedies to the Problems Posed by Boilerplate
This is the second in a series of posts reviewing Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law.
Theresa Amato, a public interest lawyer, is the executive director of Citizen Works, and the director of the Fair Contracts Project (faircontracts.org).
Professor Radin’s masterpiece Boilerplate sets forth the intellectual underpinnings for an energetic movement to correct the imbalance of power between corporations and consumers in fine print contracts. Her explanations of the degradation of consent and the resulting diminishment of the rule of law should incite all those who read it to not merely nod in accord, but to take action.
Radin calls for a new legal way to analyze the boilerplate that she painstakingly shows fails to merit the term “contract” —and therefore should not be evaluated under contract law. Instead, she suggests we evaluate these mice-print monstrosities as a product itself that can cause harm. The boilerplate should be considered a potential inflictor of consumer harm through massive “rights deletion,” or “rights strip mining,” as Ralph Nader says, and thus should be addressed in tort, or under a new legal rubric altogether. This bold suggestion alone elevates the book to compulsory reading as most academic articles tend only to set forth descriptions and analyses of the epic failure of the disclosure regulatory paradigm, but then fall short on solutions and action.
In both academia and consumer advocacy, far too few people are focused on solving the problem—to create remedies beyond studying the problem or treating its symptoms in a legal aid, case-by-case manner. Though there may be disagreement on the exact contours or how to solve the problems of boilerplate, there does seem to be some movement in recognition, at least, that there is a problem in need of solution.
A survey of the academia and advocacy landscape reveals:
- The fine print qua fine print has grown longer and mutates more frequently, as NYU School of Law Professor Florencia Marotta-Wurgler has documented, for example, with on-line contracts;
- Businesses are not self-policing on boilerplate, or making market corrections for the consumer’s benefit. To the contrary, recent Supreme Court decisions have spurred rights-reducing action, by sanctioning, for example, mandatory arbitration and class action waivers;
- Consumer abuses in fine print will not be solved with financial literacy courses and by blaming consumers for not reading unilaterally-imposed contracts, which they cannot understand if they do, and then don’t necessarily use to make decisions, as Loyola Law School Los Angeles Professor Lauren Willis and others have ably documented;
- Despite decades of computer use, inadequate corporate transparency regulation means that in many industries terms of service are still not online; it is often difficult to obtain copies of the contracts—until after becoming a customer for the underlying product or service. This has the additional potential to skew academic research to on line industries, and not necessarily where some of the gravest rights-reducing behavior may exist, e.g., in harder-to-obtain nursing home or employment contracts.
- The judiciary applies antiquated tenets of contract law—in a legal fiction—that upholds abusive provisions in a case-by-case unconscionability analysis, primarily enforcing them by continuing to place the outdated “duty to read” on consumers, including those who patently cannot. Consumers face a curtailed potential for redress, especially when coupled with disappearing class action potential.
- Federal and state agencies to date have not allocated significant resources for a much needed focus on the corporate fine print—not even at the bully pulpit level—nor have they posited suitable alternatives.
- Instead of Congress doling out more regulatory authority to agencies (as they did with the CFPB and the SEC and as they should to help fix this), for example, members continue to contest the CFPB, have failed to grant the Federal Trade Commission Administrative Procedures Act rulemaking authority, leaving it hamstrung, and have failed to hold hearings on the widespread abuses of boilerplate affecting tens of millions of Americans daily.
We at Fair Contracts believe that there should be greater
focus on seeking a systemic, upstream solution to boilerplate. Though
some would hang their hats on piecemeal “improved disclosure” as a least
invasive means of correction, such a course of action alone is tepid and wholly
inadequate to the serious problems documented by Radin and others.
Nor must we only wait for the next glacial restatement of contract law, or a revolution of contract theory that reverses the legal presumption of enforcement of harmful contract terms, or a different way to analyze the legality of fine print contracts, including treating them as torts as all of these are definitely long, long, long-run solutions.
Intermediary, if admittedly only partial, remedial steps exist that we should explore for innovation that could lead to a better future for consumers, including:
- Dramatic elevation of public awareness of the rights removal hazards contained within the fine print, with a multi-pronged education and media campaign;
- Significant increases in data collection of contracts and scholarship across multiple industries, with more empirical research to ascertain the prevalence of harmful consumer provisions, their collusive origins, and their negative economic consequences, with examples of how consumer harm is caused to large categories of people who forfeit their rights without knowledge of doing so;
- Promulgation of a model set of principles for provisions within, and reform of, the fine print;
- Outright legislative and regulatory bans (or workarounds – through ombudsman consumer review boards) on contract provisions that undermine the rule of law, fair competition and democracy, including the deprivation of consumers of the civil justice system and their First Amendment rights, vendor assertions of no accountability (thus allowing contract law to eat tort law alive) and consumer disadvantageous unilateral modification powers;
- Development of model state and federal legislation to ensure a fair regulatory playing-field;
- Development of a “fair trade” or “hypoallergenic” or “green-star energy-efficient”-type seal that does not necessarily signal a “fair contract” but does signal the absence of a known set of provisions that reduce consumer rights for those consumers who care about them, which should be most if the educational goals were attained, and thus obviate the need to read through the fine print for at least that standardized set of terms symbolized by the seal. This would permit consumers an actual market within which to shop, should government fail to act to preserve their rights; and
- Studying the consequences from other countries which are ahead in consumer protection. There is a reason that the EU black and grey lists terms, as does Australia: They are unfair to consumers and their governments do not let corporations dictate all the terms, rewriting and undermining in a private ordering those public policies passed as legislation. In early April 2013, The Consumer Council of Hong Kong urged businesses to produce short and simple contracts that eliminate unfair terms and is starting to provide model contracts. See: http://www.consumer.org.hk/website/ws_en/competition_issues/policy_position/2012040301.print
We should be debating these matters in the United States. We need an organized consumer constituency to reverse the contract peonage so reform efforts may gain the momentum needed to create alternatives to the unilateral, corporate-dictated status quo.
[Posted, on Theresa Amato's behalf, by JT]
May 14, 2013 in Books, Commentary, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Monday, May 13, 2013
Boilerplate Symposium I: Peter Alces on Consent
This is the first in a series of posts reviewing Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law.
In this fine book, Margaret Jane Radin concludes that “consent” lacks a reality referent in contract. That is, somewhere between what she describes as “World A (Agreement),” the universe of enforceable promises negotiated “at arms’ length” by parties of similar relative sophistication, and “World B (Boilerplate),” where standard and oppressive terms effect normative and democratic degradation, consent is lost. This conclusion is not shocking; it is difficult to think of anyone (probably including even Randy Barnett) who honestly believes that real consent has very much to do with most (even virtually all) contracting these days. So we can all agree: where there is boilerplate, there is no “meaningful” consent, which is to say there is none of the consent that should matter to contract. From that premise, Professor Radin concludes that World B is not a contracts universe at all, but is instead a realm better understood by reference to tort principles (and it is even worse than Grant Gilmore ever imagined).
But once we acknowledge the death of consent, how much
more new is there to say about boilerplate?
You could despair with Professor Radin that political forces make it
unlikely that the American justice system will respond as would the European
Union; that consequentialist apologists rely on arm chair empirical assumptions
without actually doing the necessary math; that by a 5-4 decision of the United
States Supreme Court the Federal Arbitration Act has been contorted to
undermine our justice system; that a curiously reasoned decision of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has somehow become the
prevailing (if not final) word on contract formation: but at the end of the
day, it is difficult to identify certainly
the extent of the harm or glimpse a
viable cure. (Those troubled by
boilerplate need to do the same math they complain form contracts proponents
fail to do.)
While Professor Radin is right that there are distinguishable Worlds of contract, she does not make clear enough that the two Worlds are on a continuum; they are not so clearly dichotomous. Further, the contours of the continuum are obscure: many very sophisticated people know quite well what they are giving up when they sign a form contract or click “I agree," and yet do so willingly. That is generally the rational thing to do. Now Boilerplate does put boilerplate on a three dimensional matrix that would be sensitive to degrees of consent, alienability of the right in issue, and the size of the cohort prejudiced. But in describing Worlds A and B in dichotomous terms, the book may obscure the reasons why it remains rational to agree to form contracts, without reading their terms. So I think the book would have been stronger had it described Worlds A and B along a fourth dimension.
What Professor Radin has to say about consent is surely true, but what she says is really a truism: we know that consent is a conclusion rather than an analytical device, and that consent is also a term of art, largely divorced from the important normative work it can do in World A. What we do not know, though, is when World A becomes World B: it is not just the case that all form contracts are World B contracts. Whether a contract is World A or World B is a function of the very factors that contract doctrine could take seriously, if the composition of the Supreme Court were different, and if all Federal Courts of Appeal judges knew a bit more about the common law of contract and the UCC.
[Posted, on Peter Alces's behalf, by JT]May 13, 2013 in Books, Contract Profs, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Boilerplate Symposium: The First Five
We begin our online symposium on Margaret Radin's book, Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law with five posts this week. This post will serve to introduce our guest bloggers.
Peter A. Alces is the Rollins Professor of Law and Cabell Research Professor of Law at the College of William & Mary School of Law, where he has taught since 1991. He is the author of A Theory of Contract Law: Empirical Insights and Moral Psychology; Commercial Contracting; The Law of Suretyship and Guaranty; Bankruptcy: Cases and Materials; Cases, Problems and Materials on Payment Systems; The Commercial Law of Intellectual Property; Sales, Leases and Bulk Transfers; The Law of Fraudulent Transactions; and Uniform Commercial Code Transactions Guide. He has also published articles in the Northwestern, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, North Carolina, Fordham, California, Texas, and William and Mary Law Reviews, and the Emory, Ohio State and Georgetown Law Journals.
Theresa Amato is the executive director Citizen Works which she started with Ralph Nader in 2001. After earning her degrees from Harvard University and the New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar, Amato clerked in the Southern District of New York for the Honorable Robert W. Sweet. She was a consultant to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (Human Rights First) and wrote an influential human rights report on child canecutters in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. She then became the youngest litigator at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where she was the Director of the Freedom of Information Clearinghouse in Washington D.C. In 1993, Amato founded the nationally-recognized, Illinois-based Citizen Advocacy Center and served as its executive director for eight years. She currently serves as its Board President. Most recently, she has launched Fair Contracts.org to reform the fine print in standard form contracts. In 2009, The New Press (New York) published her book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny. She also appears prominently in the Sundance-selected and Academy Awards short-listed documentary “An Unreasonable Man.”
Andrew Gold is a professor of law at the Depaul University College of law. His primary research interests address legal theory and the law of corporations. Following graduation from Duke University School of Law, he clerked with the Honorable Daniel Manion of the Seventh Circuit, and with the Honorable Loren Smith of the Court of Federal Claims. After his clerkships, he joined Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he practiced corporate litigation. Professor Gold's article, "A Property Theory of Contract," was lead article in the 2009 volume of the Northwestern University Law Review. His recent publications also include articles in the William and Mary, U.C. Davis, and Maryland law reviews. In 2007, Professor Gold received the College of Law's Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and, in 2010, he received the Award for Excellence in Teaching. During the 2011-2012 academic year, Professor Gold was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, and in Fall 2011, he was an HLA Hart Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. His scholarship has focused on contract theory; private law theory; fiduciary duties in corporate law; and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act.
David Horton joined the UC Davis faculty in 2012, after three years at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. He received his B.A. cum laude from Carleton College in 1997 and his J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 2004. At UCLA, he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as Chief Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review. He then practiced at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco and clerked for the Honorable Ronald M. Whyte of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. From 2007 to 2009, he taught legal research and writing at UC Berkeley School of Law. Horton’s research focuses on wills and trusts, federal arbitration law, and contracts. His recent work has appeared or will soon appear in the NYU Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, University of Colorado Law Review, and Virginia Law Review in Brief, among others. He also wrote an amicus brief on behalf of contracts professors in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the recent Supreme Court case.
Ethan J. Leib is a noted expert in constitutional law, legislation, and contracts. His most recent book, Friend v. Friend: Friendships and What, If Anything, the Law Should Do About Them (2011), explores the benefits of legal recognition of friendship and was published by Oxford University Press. He has three forthcoming articles on public law subjects: one in the Journal of Political Philosophy examining fiduciary principles in political representation; one in the California Law Review applying the fiduciary principle to the activity of judging within democracies; and one in The University of Chicago Law Review exploring whether elected judges should be interpreting statutes differently from their appointed colleagues. Leib's other academic writing has appeared in journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Election Law Journal, Journal of Legal Education, Law & Philosophy, and elsewhere. He has also written for a broader audience in the New York Times, USA Today, SF Chronicle, Policy Review,Washington Post, New York Law Journal, The American Scholar, and The New Republic. Before joining Fordham, Leib was a Professor of Law at the University of California–Hastings. He has served as a Law Clerk to Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York.
We look forward to a stimulating fortnight of exchanges on this important new book.
[JT]
May 13, 2013 in About this Blog, Books, Commentary, Contract Profs, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Plain Meaning Leads to Mood Indigo for Ellington Heir
Duke Ellington’s grandson brought a breach of contract action against a group of music publishers; he sought to recover royalties allegedly due under a 1961 contract. Under that contract, Ellington and his heirs are described as the “First Party” and several music publishers, including EMI Mills, are referred to as the “Second Party.” On appeal from the dismissal of the case, Ellington’s grandson pointed to paragraph 3(a) of the contract which required the Second Party to pay Ellington "a sum equal to fifty (50 percent) percent of the net revenue actually received by the Second Party from…foreign publication" of Ellington's compositions. Ellington’s grandson argued that the music publishers had since acquired ownership of the foreign subpublishers, thereby skimming net revenue actually received in the form of fees and, in turn, payment due to Ellington’s heirs.
The appellate court explained the contract and the grandson’s argument:
This is known in the music publishing industry as a "net receipts" arrangement by which a composer, such as Ellington, would collect royalties based on income received by a publisher after the deduction of fees charged by foreign subpublishers. As stated in plaintiff's brief, "net receipts" arrangements were standard when the agreement was executed in 1961. Plaintiff also notes that at that time foreign subpublishers were typically unaffiliated with domestic publishers such as Mills Music. Over time, however, EMI Mills, like other publishers, acquired ownership of the foreign subpublishers through which revenues derived from foreign subpublications were generated. Accordingly, in this case, fees that previously had been charged by independent foreign subpublishers under the instant net receipts agreement are now being charged by subpublishers owned by EMI Mills. Plaintiff asserts that EMI Mills has enabled itself to skim his claimed share of royalties from the Duke Ellington compositions by paying commissions to its affiliated foreign subpublishers before remitting the bargained-for royalty payments to Duke Ellington's heirs.
Ellington’s grandson asserted on appeal that the agreement is ambiguous as to whether "net revenue actually received by the Second Party" entails revenue received from EMI Mills's foreign subpublisher affiliates. The appellate court found no ambiguity in the agreement; the court stated that the agreement “by its terms, requires EMI Mills to pay Ellington’s heirs 50 percent of the net revenue actually received from foreign publication of Ellington’s compositions.” It reasoned:
"Foreign publication" has one unmistakable meaning regardless of whether it is performed by independent or affiliated subpublishers. Given the plain meaning of the agreement's language, plaintiff's argument that foreign subpublishers were generally unaffiliated in 1961, when the agreement was executed, is immaterial.
The court continued by stating that “the complaint sets forth no basis for plaintiff's apparent premise that subpublishers owned by EMI Mills should render their services for free although independent subpublishers were presumably compensated for rendering identical services.” Thus, dismissal of the suit was affirmed.
Ellington v. EMI Music, 651558/10, NYLJ 1202598616249, at *1 (App. Div., 1st, Decided May 2, 2013).
[Meredith R. Miller]
May 9, 2013 in Celebrity Contracts, In the News, Music, Recent Cases, True Contracts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Foretaste of Our Online Symposium on Margaret Radin's Boilerplate
Next week, we will begin an online sympsoium on Margaret Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law. Here is a description of the book provided by the publisher's websit
Boilerplate--the fine-print terms and conditions that we become subject to when we click "I agree" online, rent an apartment, enter an employment contract, sign up for a cellphone carrier, or buy travel tickets--pervades all aspects of our modern lives. On a daily basis, most of us accept boilerplate provisions without realizing that should a dispute arise about a purchased good or service, the nonnegotiable boilerplate terms can deprive us of our right to jury trial and relieve providers of responsibility for harm. Boilerplate is the first comprehensive treatment of the problems posed by the increasing use of these terms, demonstrating how their use has degraded traditional notions of consent, agreement, and contract, and sacrificed core rights whose loss threatens the democratic order.
Margaret Jane Radin examines attempts to justify the use of boilerplate provisions by claiming either that recipients freely consent to them or that economic efficiency demands them, and she finds these justifications wanting. She argues, moreover, that our courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies have fallen short in their evaluation and oversight of the use of boilerplate clauses. To improve legal evaluation of boilerplate, Radin offers a new analytical framework, one that takes into account the
nature of the rights affected, the quality of the recipient's consent, and the extent of the use of these terms. Radin goes on to offer possibilities for new methods of boilerplate evaluation and control, among them the bold suggestion that tort law rather than contract law provides a preferable analysis for some boilerplate schemes. She concludes by discussing positive steps that NGOs, legislators, regulators, courts, and scholars could take to bring about better practices
But before we kick off the symposium, we have a timely new review of the book from Omri Ben-Shahar (pictured) that is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. The review is entitled Regulation through Boilerplate: An Apologia, and here is a description from SSRN:
[JT]This essay reviews Margaret Jane Radin’s Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, And The Rule Of Law (Princeton Press, 2013). It responds to two of the book’s principal complaints against boilerplate consumer contracts: that they modify people’s rights without true agreement to, or even minimal knowledge of, their terms; and that the provisions they unilaterally enact are substantively intolerable. I argue, counter-intuitively, that contracts with long fine prints are no more complex and baffling to consumers than any alternative boilerplate-free templates of contracting. Therefore, there is no alternative universe in which consumers enter simpler contracts better informed of the legal terms. In addition, I argue that any policy that mandates consumer-friendlier arrangements (such as ones that eliminate boilerplate arbitration clauses, warranty disclaimers, or data collection) would hurt consumers in an unintended but potentially costly way.
May 9, 2013 in About this Blog, Books, Recent Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Harper Lee Sues to Recover Her Rights to To Kill a Mockingbird
For many lawyers, To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM) is at the top of their list of "favorite books/movies about a lawyer." TKAM is about more than lawyering, of course. It's about racism, family, class and much more. This week, TKAM also is about "fraudulent inducement," "consideration" (a lack thereof) and "fiduciary duty." All of those subjects are in the complaint filed by TKAM author, (Nelle) Harper Lee, against her purported literary agent.
In the suit, Lee alleges that Samuel L. Pinkus (and a few other defendants) fraudulently induced her to sign her TKAM rights over to one of Pinkus's companies in 2007 and again in 2011. According to Lee, Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's longtime agent, Eugene Winick, transferred many of Winick's clients to himself when Winick fell ill in 2006. Pinkus then allegedly misappropriated royalties and failed to promote Lee's copyright in the U.S. and abroad.
For Contracts professors, the Lee v. Pinkus suit provides some interesting hypos to discuss when teaching fraud, consideration, and assignments of rights. Regarding fraud, Lee alleges that Pinkus lied to her about what she was signing at a time when she was particularly vulnerable due to a recent stroke and declining eyesight. Consideration is in play because there allegedly was no consideration from Pinkus to Lee in exchange for Lee's transfer of rights to Pinkus. Assignment issues arose because the many companies who owed Lee royalties reportedly struggled to figure out which company or companies they should pay given Pinkus's many shell companies. Overall, it's a sad story for Ms. Lee but one that students may find particularly engaging.
[Heidi R. Anderson]
p.s. Although there are many quote-worthy passages in TKAM, a favorite of mine (useful when advising students about their writing) is: “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.” Please feel free to share your favorites in the comments.
May 9, 2013 in Books, Current Affairs, Film, In the News, Recent Cases, Teaching, True Contracts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Weekly Top Tens from the Social Science Research Council
RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days)
TOP 10 Papers for Journal of Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal
March 8, 2013 to May 7, 2013
RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days)
TOP 10 Papers for Journal of LSN: Contracts (Topic)
March 8, 2013 to May 7, 2013
[JT]
May 7, 2013 in Recent Scholarship | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
CALL FOR PAPERS: CLASSCRITS VI: Stuck in Forward? Debt, Austerity & the Possibility of the Political
CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION ClassCrits VI
Stuck in Forward?
Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political
Sponsored by
Southwestern Law School &
U.C. Davis School of Law
Los Angeles, CA * November 15-16, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Professor Akhil Gupta, Department of Anthropology
Director, Center for India and South Asia, University of California, Los Angeles
What are the possibilities and alternatives for a genuinely progressive economic project in an age of resurgent neoliberal policies and politics, worldwide shifts in population and demographics, and hegemonic economics?
How can we address the challenges of our age including, but not limited to: globalization; shifting power relationships between the developed world and formerly “third world” countries; massive intergenerational and upward transfers of wealth; abject poverty; staggering debt; wage stagnation; a declining middle class; an increasingly dysfunctional food system; and environmental and climate risks that will require concerted national and international efforts.
Stuck in Forward? Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political will address these questions by bringing together scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, and others to critically examine and take stock of who wins, who loses, how the law facilitates the hierarchical and spatial distribution of winners and losers, and how we may use law and politics to develop both real and utopian interstitial spaces of classlessness within the new post-recession global order.
We invite panel proposals and paper presentations that speak to this year’s theme as well as to general ClassCrits themes. In addition, we extend a special invitation to junior scholars (i.e., graduate students or any non-tenured faculty member) to submit proposals for works in progress . A senior scholar as well as other scholars will comment upon each work in progress in a small, supportive working session.
Please visit the ClassCrits website for more information about this year’s themes and topics.
For the full call for proposals, contact any member of the Conference Planning Committee:
Danielle Kie Hart, Southwestern Law School
dhart@swlaw.edu
Tonya Brito, The University of Wisconsin Law School
tlbrito@wisc.edu
Athena Mutua, SUNY Buffalo Law School
admutua@buffalo.edu
Lucille Jewel, John Marshall Law School
ljewel@johnmarshall.edu
Martha McCluskey, SUNY Buffalo Law School
mcclusk@buffalo.edu
Jessica Owley, SUNY Buffalo Law School
JOL@buffalo.edu
Matthew Titolo, West Virginia University College of Law
Matthew.titolo@mail.wvu.edu
René Reich-Graefe, Western New England University School of Law
rene.reich-graefe@law.wne.edu
[JT]
May 7, 2013 in Conferences | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Lil Wayne Loses Endorsement Over Emmett Till Lyrics, But Don't Worry, Celebrating Violence Against Women Is Still Fine
As reported here in Rolling Stone, Mountain Dew has terminated its endorsement deal with Lil Wayne because of offensive lyrics in an unauthorized leak of a remix of Future's "Karate Chop." The offensive lyrics can be found here, except that the online version omits the reference to Emmett Till, a fourteen year old African-American boy who was tortured and killed in Mississippi in 1955, after allegedly having whistled at a white woman. Lil Wayne's lyrics brag that he will do to a woman's vagina what was done to Emmett Till.
Emmett Till's family was outraged by the reference. As noted in the New York Times, although Rolling Stone and others have characterized Lil Wayne's response as an apology, the family recognized that it was not an apology. Lil Wayne "acknolwedged" the family's hurt and pledged not to reference Emmett Till in his lyrics in the future.
What is really striking is the utter lack of comment on the rest of the lyrics. The reference to Emmett Till imay only be the most offensive thing about the song, but all of the lyrics in Lil Wayne's verse are absolutely vile. The Times reports that Al Sharpton has been called in to take advantage of this "teaching moment" to help young artists like Lil Wayne understand more about the civil rights movement.
Violence against women is also a civil rights issue.
[JT]
May 7, 2013 in Celebrity Contracts, Commentary, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Monday, May 6, 2013
Yogurt Deal Goes Sour
Interesting story here on the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog. Interesting because it seems like the case will be very difficult for plaintiff to prove and its damages will be a challenge to calculate with requisite specificity.
The facts, as also reported here on Food Navigator-USA are as follows:
In 2012, Tula Foods introduced its Better Whey of Life premium Greek yogurt line, which is now sold in over 400 stores. Tula contracted with the Kroger Co., which in addition to its retail stores owns and operate 37 manufacturing plants at which it produced, among other things, Tula's Better Whey of Life yogurts. According to the complaint, as summarized on the Market Watch blog, becasue Kroger did not produce the yogurt according to Tula's specification (and it allegedly did so knowlingly). Tula also brings claims against Weber Flavors, which Tula claims failed to properly "treat and process the vanilla bean base" in Tula's yogurt. As a result, Kroger released "poor-quality unappetizing yogurt on the market." If that isn't not specific enough for you, the complaint specifies that, as a result of the improperly processed vanilla bean base, Tula found mold growing in its finished yogurt, resulting in a recall.
Just an aside here, for fans of Slings and Arrows, doesn't that slogan (something like, "Tula provides only poor-quality unappetizing yogurt laced with mold") strike you as precisely the sort of ad campaign that Froghammer would have come up with if they were hired to market Better Whey of Life yogurts?
There is also a misappropriation claim, since Kroger allegedly used Tula's trade secrets to make a competing store brank of Greek yogurt -- but was it of equally poor quality and equally unappetizing? Surely a jury question there.
The theory of contract damages will be a challenge, because Tula will have to show that its product would have taken off were it not for the devastating effects on its reputation caused by the alleged breaches and resulting product recalls. Demonstrating defendants' failure (perhaps intentional failure) to adhere to Tula's specifications will also be a lot of work. But those allegations will also be very difficult to dismiss without a lot of discovery and perhaps a trial, so the settlement price should be high if the complaint adequately states a cause of action. Moreover, as Tula is also bringing claims for breach of express and implied warranties, a record of moldy yogurt ought to do the trick.
[JT]
May 6, 2013 in In the News, Recent Cases | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Friday, May 3, 2013
Teaching Sales: A Quandary
So, here's an interesting problem I'm facing. I taught sales for the first time this semester. I would say I devoted about 2/3 of class time to going over problems. In order to maximize active learning, I had the students hand in written answers to three of the problems each week, and that homework counted cumulatively for 40% of the grade).
My students were amazingly diligent, often looking up cases referenced in the questions and reading through the comments to Article 2 of the UCC. I don't know what all the students thought about the assessment system, but a few have told me that they appreciated the fact that they had no choice but to keep up with the material, even if answering the questions was time-consuming and often frustrating because of either ambiguities in the Code or tensions between the Code and the caselaw.
But here's the problem. I wasn't born yesterday. Now that there has been a group of students that has taken the course with me, their notes, including their answers to the homework problems, will circulate. I think it is unrealistic to expect students (especially 3Ls) to refrain from consulting such excellent authority when answering the questions. Unfortunately, the mystic chords of memory will swell when touched not by the better angels of our nature (as represented at left), but by a consultation with last year's students' answers, leading to idle minds with which devils (represented at right) are just as happy to play as with idle hands.
So how can I re-create this year's experience without coming up with my own original questions every time I teach the course?
Any suggestions -- from any perspective: law prof, student, interested practitioner -- would be most welcome.
[JT]
May 3, 2013 in Teaching | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Ticketmaster and Those Pesky Bots
Last week, I mentioned a California bill addressing the issue of ticket resales and secondary marketplaces. I think that the primary problem for consumers is not that these secondary marketplaces exist -- being able to resell tickets is generally a good thing for consumers--but that scalpers use bots (automated software programs) to buy up large quantities of tickets which they then resell at jacked up prices. Fans get angry because shows are quickly "sold out" and they are forced to pay heart stopping prices in the secondary marketplace if they want to see their favorite performer (or get decent seats). Well, Ticketmaster has had enough and is suing 21 people involved in circumventing its online security system by buying up vast quantities of tickets. Ticketmaster's weapon of choice here? The universally reviled yet oh-too-familiar Terms of Use. Ticketmaster's TOU prohibits the use of bots. (It's also suing for copyright infringement, among other things). In fact, back in the early days of the Internet, bots were one of the reasons companies started to use TOU. The more things change....
[Nancy Kim]
May 2, 2013 in Current Affairs, E-commerce, Miscellaneous, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
New in Print
Conte C. Cicala, A Punic Web: Statutes and Contracts Affecting the Container Trade, 25 U.S.F. Mar. L.J. 153 (2012-13)
David F. Eisenberg, Evolving with the Times: A Push to Legalize Surrogate Parenting Contracts in the State of New York, 33 Pace L. Rev. 302 (2013)
George R. La Noue, Defining Social and Economic Disadvantage: Are Government Preferential Business Certification Programs Narrowly Tailored? 12 U. Md. L.J. Race, Religion, Gender & Class 2749 (2012)
Joseph Lavitt, Leaving Contemporary Legal Taxonomy, 90 Denv. U. L. Rev. 213 (2012)
[JT]
May 2, 2013 in Recent Scholarship | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Opening at Ave Maria Law
Ave
Maria School of Law invites applications for multiple faculty positions from
entry-level and lateral candidates, pre- or post-tenure. Ave Maria particularly welcomes applications
from candidates with teaching and research interest in Contracts, Business
Organizations, Sales, Negotiable Instruments, Secured Transactions, and related
commercial subjects. Applicants should
have superior academic credentials; a record, or the promise, of excellence in
teaching and legal scholarship; and an interest and commitment in exploring his
or her teaching and research interests in an institution that strives to
integrate the Catholic intellectual tradition into teaching, scholarship, and
service. Entry-level applicants may demonstrate scholarly promise by
publications in scholarly journals or scholarly works in progress. In the
case of any applicant with tenure, a distinguished record
of teaching and scholarship is required. Interested candidates should
send their materials to Professor Patrick T. Gillen, current chair of the
Appointments Committee. Applications
can be e-mailed to Professor Gillen at ptgillen@avemarialaw.edu or can be
mailed to his attention at 1025 Commons Circle, Naples, Florida 34119. Resume review will begin immediately and
continue until the positions are filled.
Ave Maria School of Law, providing legal education enriched by the Catholic Faith, seeks employees whose education, experience and beliefs are consistent with its mission. Ave Maria School of Law is an EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION employer that values diversity, including diversity in religious affiliation, and strongly encourages applications from persons of diverse backgrounds willing to support the institutional mission; it requires compliance with all state and federal laws governing employment discrimination.
[JT]
May 1, 2013 in Help Wanted, Law Schools | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
"Cop Killer" Reward Offer Leads to Breach of Contract Suit
We previously blogged about high-profile reward offers by Donald Trump, Bill Maher, a laptop-seeking music producer, and a Hong Kong businessman. Only one of those (the producer) led to an actual lawsuit. The latest reward offer in the news involves murder.
In February of this year, the City of Los Angeles and other entities collectively offered a $1 million reward for information regarding Chris Dorner. Dorner was the former policeman and Navy officer who (allegedly) killed four people, including two policemen. The manhunt for Dorner, labeled the "Cop Killer," reportedly was one of the largest in LA County's history.
One of the people claiming the reward, Rick Heltebrake, has filed a breach of contract suit in LA Superior Court (the complaint can be obtained here but only for a fee). Heltebrake is suing the City of Los Angeles, and supporting entities for $1 million and is suing three cities that offered separate $100,000 rewards related to Dorner. Heltebrake was a carjacking victim of Dorner's. After he escaped, Heltebrake called the police and told them where they could find Dorner. Because Dorner was found at the location Heltebrake identified, he is seeking the rewards.
The contract controversy is one of interpretation. The rewards reportedly were available for "information leading to the apprehension and capture of" Dorner, for the "identification and apprehension" of Dorner, for the "capture and conviction" of Dorner, and for "information leading to the arrest and conviction of" Dorner (I do not have the complaint so these excerpts are cobbled together from TMZ, Courthouse News Service, ABC and other sources). Police charged Dorner on February 11, 2013. Heltebrake called police on February 12. On February 25, after a shootout with police and structure fire, Dorner was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Given the above facts, some of the intepretations questions are: (i) whether the authorities' shootout and recovery of Dorner's body qualifies as "apprehension" or "arrest," (ii) whether the "and" between "identification and arrest" or between "capture and conviction" means that both are required in order to collect, and many, many more. A complicating factor is that the $1 million reward was merely announced on TV; no written record was made. At least one reward offeror, the City of Riverside, has stated that the lack of a "conviction" means that it won't pay. Although this is a tragic story, I may mention it the next time I teach the Carbolic Smoke Ball case.
If anyone is able to find the complaint for free, please post a link in the comments.
[Heidi R. Anderson]
May 1, 2013 in Current Affairs, In the News, Teaching, True Contracts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
