What you should do if you want your Super Bowl party to be able to last until 4 a.m. (hint: not this)

A recent case out of New York, PJAM Prods., LLC v. M Light, LLC, 652409/2018, stems from a Super Bowl party. PJAM licensed M Light's venue to hold a party coinciding with Super Bowl weekend. There were discussions about the party being allowed to go on until 4 a.m., even though local law required the party to shut down by 2 a.m. PJAM claimed that M Light talked about being able to get permission from the city to keep the venue open until 4 a.m.  

No such permission was ever received, however, and PJAM sued for breach of contract. The problem was there was nothing in the contract requiring M Light to get such permission. The contract required M Light to have the proper government permits for the party, but did not specify that those permits should allow the party to extend until 4 a.m., and PJAM acknowledged that the law in the city was to close by 2 a.m., so that's what the proper government permits would have said, too. There was nothing in the Agreement about M Light lobbying the city to keep the venue open until 4 a.m. 

PJAM's fraudulent inducement claim also failed, because there was no allegation that M Light was lying about its intention to lobby the city when it said that it was going to. As for allegations the M Light led PJAM to believe its connections with the city were such that the lobbying would be successful, the court called those "mere puffery." The court said it was not justifiable for PJAM to rely on M Light's statements to believe that the 4 a.m. permission would definitely be obtained; rather, PJAM was taking a risk, and there was no indication that things would have turned out differently if M Light had lobbied harder or had better city connections. 

Basically, if PJAM wanted M Light to bear the risk of the 4 a.m. permission not coming through, it should have been put in the contract, and it wasn't. The contract was integrated, with a merger clause, so the court did not allow parol evidence of this as an additional term. 

The moral of the story is: If you're signing a written contract, don't rely on oral representations different from the contract.