ContractsProf Blog

Was Leaving Neverland a breach of contract by HBO based on its airing of a 1992 Michael Jackson concert?

HBO's Leaving Neverland documentary, detailing the allegations of sexual abuse leveled at Michael Jackson, has resulted in an interesting lawsuit in the Central District of California, Optimum Prods. v. Home Box Office, CV 19-1862-GW(PJWx) (behind paywall).

Because Jackson is dead, there is no defamation claim to be brought; therefore, this lawsuit is grounded in a contract between Jackson and Optimum's predecessor entity and HBO regarding televising one of Jackson's concerts from his Dangerous world tour, which HBO aired in October 1992. The contract contained a provision prohibiting HBO from making "any disparaging remarks concerning" Jackson. Optimum alleges that HBO has breached this provision by airing the Leaving Neverland documentary. 

Naturally the contract also contained an arbitration provision, which provided that the parties would choose an arbitrator and, if they couldn't agree, eventually the Superior Court of the State of the California for the County of Los Angeles would select the arbitrator. Optimum initially filed its complaint in state court, but HBO removed it to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction. Optimum does not dispute the existence of diversity jurisdiction but argues that the arbitration provision also acts as a forum selection provision requiring the litigation be heard by California Superior Court in Los Angeles County. 

The court declines to construe the arbitration provision as conferring exclusive jurisdiction to California state court. The arbitration provision does not discuss exclusive jurisdiction at all. The plain language of the provision only provides the state court with one responsibility: choosing an arbitrator if the parties can't agree on one. That is not a conferral of exclusive jurisdiction. 

There is also a dispute between the parties over whether the suit needs to be arbitrated. The court is torn on that issue. The American Arbitration Association's rule that arbitrability of a contract be decided by the arbitrator came into effect after the parties had signed the 1992 contract, and the court is hesitant to apply it retroactively. There is precedent to support retroactive application but the court thinks it doesn't make sense to pretend that the parties "clearly and unmistakably" agreed to be bound by rules that did not even exist. None of the precedent provided to the court was binding, so the court requests that the parties discuss the issue further at an upcoming hearing. 

On this Memorial Day weekend, rethinking ever visiting any spa again...

A recent case out of New York, Leakey v. The Setai Group LLC, 151298/2014, concerns a tragic event. The plaintiff, Leakey, was allegedly sexually assaulted during a massage.

Leakey sued several entities, including the owners and operators of the spa, on theories of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and breach of contract. The negligence claims failed because the massage therapist acted outside of the scope of his employment in sexually assaulting Leakey and there was no evidence the spa operators knew of any propensity by the therapist for inappropriate sexual conduct (this also doomed the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim). As for the breach of contract claim, there was no promise that the spa or its employees would be safe, so there was nothing to breach. 

(You can read the complaint in the case here.)

About those added convention center fees...

I spent the past few days at a conference at the Boston Convention Center, a place so cavernous that at least I easily met my step targets every day walking between meeting rooms. The conference was an expensive one to attend (it would have been waaaay out of my price range if not for the academic rate), and enormously well-attended, and I found myself doing a lot of math: how much money in registration fees? but also, how much money to use this convention center? 

This post on extra convention center fees came across my social media just as I was musing on all of that. I know from other people who have dealt with convention centers that the extra fees are the real killer: You have to pay extra to use their catering, their AV equipment, etc. Even if all you've planned is a wedding, then you know how this goes with the add-ons. This is an arrangement that we seems to just be accepting, but maybe there should be more vocal outrage about it. 

Salmonella-infected Chicken is not a "Defective" Product

Salmonella-infected raw chicken meat is not “defective” under Maine law.  Anyone selling such meat also do not violate the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.  This is so even if tons of meat have been recalled by a manufacturer precisely because of a salmonella outbreak affecting the meat. Such held the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently.

The result may seem both incredibly gross and grotesque, but in a strange way, makes sense.  In the case, a raw food manufacturer sold almost 2 million pounds of raw meat to a food processor preparing chicken products such as frozen chicken cordon bleu products.  The manufacturer recalled the meat, causing losses to the processor in excess of $10 million.  The processor filed suit for breach of contract.  Both the trial and appellate courts held that the processor had failed to state a claim under F.R.C.P. 12(b)(6).

Why?  Because salmonella is an “inherent, unavoidable, and recognized component of raw chicken that is eliminated by proper cooking methods.”  Even though the recall admitted that the recall was adulterated with salmonella, the complaint did not allege that the chicken was contaminated with a form of salmonella that could notbe eliminated by proper cooking.  The sick consumers could have contracted the infections from merely touching the raw meat.

This shows the relatively low level of sanitary integrity that can be expected in today’s meat market. Bon Appetit! 

The case is Scarlett v. Air Methods Corporation, 2019 WL 1828908

Information Asymmetries Lead to Women Being Underpaid

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has revealed a plan that would overhaul American discrimination laws to ensure that women and men are paid the same for the same work.

Under the plan, companies with 100 or more employees would, among other things, be required to obtain a federal certification showing they are not underpaying women.  If they fail to do so, they may be fined.  The burden would be on the employers to show that any pay gap is based on merit, performance, or seniority.  If companies discriminate, they would be fined 1% of their average daily profits for every 1% of their average daily profits for every 1% gap that exists between the gender-based pay differential.  The plan would also bar employers from asking job applicants about their salary history and ban forced arbitration in pay discrimination disputes.

But is this really necessary?  Can’t employees themselves contract around this problem in a free marketplace?

Sadly, the answer is no. Women who work full time are paid an average of 80 cents for every dollar paid to men.  For black women, the figure is 61 cents.  For Latinas: only 53 cents.  And we are talking about pay for the same jobs; not educational or other relevant differences.

Of course, this is just a proposal from a political candidate who at this point in time appears unlikely to win the race.  But it raises an important, yet sadly not new, contractual problem, namely that of disparity in bargaining positions.  As the situation is now, much of the burden of avoiding this problem is on the potential or actual employee.  If a woman needs a job, how is she going to ensure that she is, in effect, paid the same as her fellow male workers?  In other words, how would she even find out what males earn in a particular job?  She can’t. And the pressure of adding one’s salary history is also known to create a bargaining inequality.  This is an example of information asymmetry; a situation in which government action might help ensure a better situation for individuals who have proved unable to obtain that situation contractually.  This is a political issue that will, of course, have to be decided by legislators.  The free market is not producing an acceptable situation here as it is unacceptable that employers pay their employees differently simply because of gender. The fact that race makes the pay disparity even greater makes matters worse.

Contract damages measures can be super-complicated!

This recent case out of Delaware, Leaf Invenergy Co. v. Invenergy Renewables LLC, C.A. No. 11830-VCL, is a corporate disagreement that requires the court to interpret the contract and then establish the proper measure of damages. Which is very complicated, with the courts disagreeing on what the benefit of the bargain was, what needs to be considered to put the party in the position they would have been in but for the breach, and how the theory of efficient breach affects all of this. Damages is always a unit that makes my students' heads hurt, and this is a case that reminds me why!

h/t to Eric Chiappinelli from Texas Tech!

Adobe reminds everyone just how much power it has over end users

Very few of us actually read the terms and conditions of the many, many, many services we register for every day. It's not like we can negotiate them, anyway, so I think, as a matter of sheer efficiency, most of us just grin and bear it. We want or need the particular service in question, it comes with conditions we can't get out of, so we just click "OK" and move on with our lives. I think a lot of people think, well, how bad can it be? 

But these terms and conditions often give the licensor a great deal of power, leaving end users with very few rights to whatever they want to gain access to. A perfect illustration of this: As many outlets have reported (here's a link to just one), Adobe has told its users that it's discontinuing older versions of popular programs like Photoshop, and so users are no longer allowed to use those versions under the licenses they agreed to years ago when they gained access to the program. We've gotten blase about the lack of ownership we have over many things in our current economy, but this action is exposing the fact that, when you rent everything instead of owning it, then there's very little we can do to keep the things we like; all of the control over them always continues to rest with the original licensor, and we possess them only so long as the original licensor lets us. You might have preferred the older version of Photoshop, but that doesn't matter; Adobe's terms of service let Adobe choose when you are allowed access to Photoshop. 

Many of the terms and conditions we agree to have clauses that leave us exposed to the whims of the more powerful party in the transaction, and consumers therefore have very little recourse. A lot of social media websites have a lot of discretion over terminating accounts, for either no reason or vaguely worded reasons that leave them with a lot of leeway. So I would caution everyone to please be careful about what you're storing on social media accounts and make sure you have copies of anything you really care about elsewhere (preferably on a device that actually belongs to you), because the terms of use make clear that there's no guarantee that social media account (or even remote storage) will always be there. 

The Controversy over the Restatement of Consumer Contracts

As some readers of this blog may be aware, the American Law Institute will be voting on whether to approve the Restatement of Consumer Contracts at its upcoming Annual Meeting on May 21. The proposed Restatement is controversial for several reasons and was the subject of a recent Yale Journal on Regulation symposium. Concerns have been raised by contractsprofs Gregory Klass, Adam Levitin and others (including yours truly) regarding the Reporters' methodology and interpretation of case law.  Of particular note, is this post written by the preeminent contracts law scholar Melvin Eisenberg. As Prof. Eisenberg points out, the doctrinal problems are glaring, harmful to consumers, and will make it even harder to explain contract law to 1Ls.

In addition to the doctrinal inconsistencies, the proposed Restatement ignores the problems created by form and digitization and does nothing to address the problems created by ubiquitous digital contracts. As Colin Marks's study showed, retailers often have different and more onerous terms for online purchases than when customers make those same purchases in-store.  

The law is still developing when it comes to digital contracts and there are signs that courts in some jurisdictions, such as California, are inclined to move the law in a more consumer-friendly direction. This Restatement would impede that evolution. Furthermore, this proposed Restatement would create a different set of rules when the contract is between two businesses and between a business and a consumer. The result in some cases is that the Restatement would subject a consumer to more stringent contract terms than a business would be subjected to under common law. While this might seem like good news for businesses, it actually is not. In many cases, due to the problem of “contract creep” which Ethan Leib and Tal Kastner discuss in their forthcoming Georgetown Law Journal article, courts are likely to end up applying the law of “consumer contracts” to all contracts, including those between businesses.  The result?  The proposed Restatement of Consumer Contracts would harm both consumers and businesses.  Instead of helping courts make sense of the evolving law, it would cement law that is incoherent and inconsistent.  Contractsprofs should be particularly concerned because it will make contract law that much more difficult to explain to 1Ls. The ALI plans to vote on the proposed Restatement of Consumer Contracts on May 21. All readers of this blog who are members are encouraged to attend and provide input.

 

An arbitration clause means you're waiving your ability to go to court! Remember that!

A recent case out of New York, Umeh v. Checole, 159884/2018, reminded me of the first time I negotiated a publishing contract (sidenote: I happen to also be a published novelist). The dispute is a straightforward one: the publishing contract contained an arbitration clause, the plaintiff alleges she didn't realize the arbitration clause meant she was giving up her ability to go to court, the court decides that arbitration is favored and the plaintiff wasn't "naive" so her agreement to the contract represented "a clear and unmistakable intent by two willing parties to resolve disputes by arbitration." 

My publishing contract didn't have an arbitration clause, but this case reminded me of it nonetheless because, after the contract was sent to me by my editor, I asked for a couple of changes and sent it back, and my editor replied something along the lines of, "Hey, I was wondering actually if you could explain to me what that part of the contract means, I've never understood." And that was my introduction to the fact that so, so, so many people are entering into contracts that they have no idea what they mean. This was a contract the publishing company sent to me, but there wasn't enough of a communication to non-lawyers in the company what the contract meant. I write fiction for fun, but I think one of the biggest fictions is the one in which we pretend that people understand the contracts they're entering into.  

The difficulties in establish an oral agreement, the difficulties in establishing promissory estoppel

A recent case out of the Fifth Circuit, Mr. Mudbug, Inc. v. Bloomin' Brands, Inc., No. 18-30626 (behind paywall), reminds us that, in the case of establishing the existence of an oral agreement, it helps to have testimony that comes from a third party.

The plaintiff asserted that it had entered into an oral agreement with the defendant where the defendant promised to buy 28 million pounds of various dressings. However, all of the testimony about the existence of the oral agreement came from the plaintiff's executives. While it was true that the plaintiff and the defendant had a ten-year business relationship, that by itself did not establish the existence of the 28-million-pound contract, especially where the defendant had provided evidence that it consistently refused to commit to a specific volume of purchasing. 

Having failed to establish the existence of a contract, the plaintiff turned to promissory estoppel, but you can only have promissory estoppel where a promise exists. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant told it that it would have to "substantially enlarge its . . . facilities" if it wanted "to produce all of the food products" that the defendant would need. But this was a declaration of fact, not a promise that the defendant would enter into contracts with the plaintiff if it expanded.