ContractsProf Blog

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. 

Deadline TODAY for CSLSA Conference Registration and Hotel Block

For any of you considering attending and presenting your work (at any stage) at the Central States Law Schools Association’s 2018 Annual Scholarship Conference next month, TODAY (September 20) is your last chance to register and reserve a room in the hotel block (Sheraton - Downtown Fort Worth, which is literally next door to the law school and is offering $159/night)!

 

If you have already registered but held off on booking your hotel accommodations, well... you should take care of that today!

 

The conference will be Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13 at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. Those who have attended in the past can attest to the fact that CSLSA provides a friendly and constructive environment for promoting legal scholarship across the board, including strong showings in areas beloved to readers of this blog, like contracts, commercial law, teaching methods, and more.

 

All the conference and hotel information you need is accessible here: http://www.cslsa.us/

 

I (Mark, that is) hope to see many of you in Fort Worth next month. But today is your last chance!

October 12-13 CSLSA 2018 Scholarship Conference at Texas A&M University School of Law

The Registration deadline has been extended until September 20, 2018 for the Central States Law Schools Association 2018 Scholarship Conference. The conference will be held on Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13 at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas. We invite law faculty from across the country to submit proposals to present papers or works in progress.

The conference hotel is the Sheraton Fort Worth Downtown Hotel, which is conveniently located immediately next door to the law school. The conference rate is $159 per night and can be accessed by going here to the special CSLSA booking site. The cutoff date for the hotel block is September 20, 2018, so please make your reservations today!

CSLSA is an organization of law schools dedicated to providing a forum for conversation and collaboration among law school academics. The CSLSA Annual Conference is an opportunity for legal scholars, especially more junior scholars, to present working papers or finished articles on any law-related topic in a relaxed and supportive setting where junior and senior scholars from various disciplines are available to comment. More mature scholars have an opportunity to test new ideas in a less formal setting than is generally available for their work. Scholars from member and nonmember schools are invited to attend.

Please click here to register.

For more information about CSLSA and the 2018 Annual Conference please subscribe to the CSLSA blog. We look forward to seeing you in Fort Worth!

CSLSA 2018 Scholarship Conference at Texas A&M University School of Law: October 12-13

Registration is now open for the Central States Law Schools Association 2018 Scholarship Conference, which will be held on Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13 at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas. We invite law faculty from across the country to submit proposals to present papers or works in progress.

CSLSA is an organization of law schools dedicated to providing a forum for conversation and collaboration among law school academics. The CSLSA Annual Conference is an opportunity for legal scholars, especially more junior scholars, to present working papers or finished articles on any law-related topic in a relaxed and supportive setting where junior and senior scholars from various disciplines are available to comment. More mature scholars have an opportunity to test new ideas in a less formal setting than is generally available for their work. Scholars from member and nonmember schools are invited to attend.

Please click here to register and to submit a presentation proposal. Registration is FREE for faculty at CSLSA member and affiliate law schools (which is quite a lot of law schools). The deadline for registration is September 1, 2018.

For more information about CSLSA and the 2018 Annual Conference please subscribe to the CSLSA blog. Information on the conference-rate hotel block will be posted soon. We look forward to seeing you in Forth Worth!

How does a "deemed effective" date affect a non-compete?

A recent case out of New York, Niznick v. Sybron Canada Holdings, Inc., 650726/2018, illustrates how ambiguity can crop up anywhere, sometimes no matter how careful you are; it's difficult to plan for every eventuality. 

The parties had a contract that included a non-competition clause that prohibited competition for five years after Niznick ceased to own any units in the company. Sybron tried to exercise an option to purchase Niznick's units in the company in 2014, but Niznick disputed the validity of Sybron's actions, and the parties engaged in litigation. Eventually, a court concluded that Sybron was permitted to exercise the option and that Niznick's ownership interest terminated as of the 2014 date when Sybron had attempted to exercise its option. After this decision, in 2017, the parties entered into a purchase and sale agreement "deemed to be effective as if the transfer" had occurred in 2014. Niznick also asserted that, therefore, the non-competition clause would expire in 2019--five years after the 2014 date. Sybron contested that reading. 

The parties' previous contracts had referred to the non-compete as "a material part of the consideration" of the agreement. The court, therefore, did not allow Niznick's attempt to minimize its importance. The purchase and sale agreement executed in 2017 stated that Niznick "is the owner" of the units in question (emphasis added). The "deemed to be effective" date was not considered to alter the language of the non-compete, which stated that it would commence when Niznick ceased to own units, which did not happen until the 2017 purchase and sale agreement, regardless of the "deemed effective" date. 

At the time of drafting the non-compete, it was probably thought that it would be pretty clear when Niznick ceased to own the units. Sybron probably did not anticipate that they would have a dispute about the operative date this way. 

 

The 13th Annual International Conference on Contracts (KCON XIII) is Looking Great!

 KCON, the annual International Conference on Contracts, is a favorite of this blog, having been associated with us since its inception. The 13th Annual International Conference on Contracts will be held at Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law, which is just around the corner (February 23 and 24, 2018).  The conference is shaping up nicely and is well worth adding to your conference and travel plans for next semester!

For those unaware, the 13th Annual International Conference on Contracts is the largest annual scholarly and educational conference devoted to Contracts and related areas of commercial law. The two-day conference is designed to afford contracts scholars and teachers at all experience levels (including those preparing to enter the academy and those whose primary teaching appointment is not in a law school) an opportunity to present/demonstrate and discuss (formally and informally) recently-published and accepted-but-not-yet-published scholarship, works-in-progress, thought experiments, not-yet-fully-formed ideas for scholarship, and pedagogical innovations, as well as to network with colleagues — and potential collaborators or mentors — from around the country and other parts of the world.

Courtesy of conference organizer Dan O'Gorman, here are some highlights so far:

We will be honoring Professor James J. White of the University of Michigan Law School and Professor Robert S. Summers of Cornell Law School with Lifetime Achievement Awards for their contributions to the field of contract law. Professor White will be in attendance to accept the awards on behalf of both himself and Professor Summers.

The Barry Law Review has agreed to have its annual spring symposium be a panel at KCon 13. In honor of our lifetime achievement award recipients, the panel will focus on Article 2 of the U.C.C. The panel will be moderated by Victor Goldberg, and panelists include Lisa Bernstein (via Skype), Robert Hillman, Steven Walt, and James White. A second panel on Article 2 is also in the works moderated by Frank Snyder, and featuring Henry Gabriel, Reporter for the Revisions of U.C.C. Article 2, 1999-2003, and whose piece will also be included in the symposium edition.

 We will have a panel on Judge Posner and his contracts jurisprudence (moderated by Michael Malloy, with panelists Bob Brain, Deborah Gerhardt, Victor Goldberg, and Jeff Harrison).

We will have a panel on the economics of contract law (moderated by Jeff Harrison, with panelists Yonathan Arbel, Peter Gerhart, Victor Goldberg, and Wentong Zheng).

We will have a panel celebrating/decrying Judge Traynor’s 1968 opinion in Pacific Gas & Electric on its 50th anniversary (moderated by Fred Jonassen, with panelists Steve Burton, Robert Hillman, and others soon to be confirmed).

Professor Tina Stark will have a show-and-tell during one of the lunch sessions about her antique English indentures. She has some going back to the 1400s, others from the Elizabethan age, some with huge regnal seals, and others of historical interest because of references to peppercorns.

We have a substantial number of international scholars who will be making presentations.

We will be having dinner at a tapas restaurant in downtown Orlando, with a trivia contest during dinner.

So if you have not done so already, we encourage you to reserve a room at the Embassy Suites by Hilton in downtown Orlando at your earliest convenience. 

You can register for the conference here: http://www.barry.edu/kcon/  

You can book your hotel room here: http://embassysuites.hilton.com/en/es/groups/personalized/M/MCODTES-BAR-20180222/index.jhtml

The deadline to submit an abstract was December 11, but abstracts submitted after that date will be accepted on a space available basis.

We look forward to seeing many of you in Orlando in February. Please note that the average high temperature in Orlando on February 23 and 24 is 74 degrees. (This is not a warranty, however.)

 

Central States Law Schools Association 2017 Scholarship Conference Coming October 6-7, 2017

Calling all scholars in contracts and commercial law!  And yes, scholars in other disciplines that we on this blog may find somewhat less interesting.

Mark your calendar now. The Central States Law Schools Association 2017 Scholarship Conference will be held on Friday, October 6 and Saturday, October 7 at the Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale, Illinois.

CSLSA is an organization of law schools dedicated to providing a forum for conversation and collaboration among law school academics. The CSLSA Annual Conference is an opportunity for legal scholars, especially more junior scholars, to present working papers or finished articles on any law-related topic in a relaxed and supportive setting where junior and senior scholars from various disciplines are available to comment. More mature scholars have an opportunity to test new ideas in a less formal setting than is generally available for their work. Scholars from member and nonmember schools are invited to attend.

Registration will formally open in July, but the special hotel blocks and rates are now available for reservation:

Holiday Inn Conference Center
$109/night
To reserve a room, call 618-549-2600 and ask for the SIU School of Law rate or book online and use block code SOL.
Note: SIU School of Law will provide shuttle service to and from the Holiday Inn & Conference Center for conference events.

Marion Holiday Inn Express
$107/night
To reserve a room, call (618) 993-5602 and ask for the SIU School of Law rate.
Shuttle service will not be available.

For more information as it becomes available, consult the CSLSA Website.

 

Robert Brain (Loyola Los Angeles) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

A PROPOSAL TO ELIMINATE UCC § 2-315

Robert Brain, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

            It is my contention that UCC § 2-315, the provision on the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, is: (1) unnecessary; and (2) causes more problems than it solves.  As such, I believe it should be eliminated from the UCC.

             The implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is unnecessary because a fitness case is, in truth, an express warranty case and can be analyzed under § 2-312.  The only difference from what the Code now recognizes as an express warranty situation and a fitness situation is that the attribute of the good comes initially from the buyer and not the seller.  However, in both cases that parties are contracting based on a shared belief that the good has certain, specified (not implied) qualities.  This can be seen by the two situations below:

             Situation One: A scuba diver walks into a dive shop, looking for a watch that will be waterproof down to 200 feet. She tells the sales associate that she’s looking for a watch for a deep dive.  The clerk says, “This one is guaranteed to be watertight down to 200 feet.” She buys the watch.

             Situation Two: The same woman walks into the same shop and talks to the same associate.  She says, “I’m doing deep diving, and am looking for a dive watch that will stay watertight down to 200 feet.”  The associate picks up the same watch as before, and says, “Here you go.”  The woman buys the watch.

            If the watch starts leaking at 60 feet, under current law, the woman would sue for breach of express warranty under Situation One, but would have to sue for breach of the implied warranty of fitness under Situation Two. The legitimate expectation of the consumer is identical in the two situations and should be analyzed identically.  If the words and actions of the associate in Situation Two are taken as affirming the 200 foot watertight attribute initially broached by the buyer, there is no difference between the two. As such, what are now fitness cases could, and should, be analyzed as breaches of express warranty.

            Conceptually it is difficult to justify the fitness warranty as an “implied” warranty.  In the merchantability cases under § 2-314, it is the attribute of the good – that it is of ordinary quality, for example – that is implied into the transaction.  But under § 2-315, the attribute of the good is expressed; what is “implied” is some representation by the seller as to that expresses attribute, but as noted above, the words and actions of the seller can easily be viewed as communicating that the seller is warranting the attribute under existing law.  It is an “implied” warranty in the same way we say a contract by conduct is an “implied-in-fact” contract.  But we treat implied-in-fact contracts as if they were express contracts, and we should so the same for fitness.

             Another issue is that courts have problems determining whether particular cases should be analyzed as a fitness or a merchantability case.  For example, suppose the buyer asks for “heavy-duty hiking boots” and suppose the shoes come apart upon their first wearing.  Is the proper claim that the boots are not fit as ordinary heavy-duty hiking boots (or even as just boots), or is it a fitness problem because they do not measure up as heavy-duty boots?  Courts have struggled with this issue from the first English case in which the fitness warranty was birthed. 

Deborah Zalesne (CUNY) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Choosing “Choice” in the Age of ART: Designer Babies and the Case for Genetic Selection

Deborah Zalesne (City University of New York School of Law)

ABSTRACT 

While rapidly developing Assisted Reproductive Technology (“ART”) such as in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, artificial insemination, IUI, fertility medication, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, cryopreservation, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, offer new pathways to parenthood, this capacity has challenged our collective notions about family. Ethical questions that arise require rethinking the traditional view of family as something “organic” and “natural” and as a “self-contained unit.”

New technologies allow for far-reaching reproductive decision-making that was not possible even a generation ago. Parents can now select the sex, race, or other characteristics of an embryo to be implanted. Parents can also choose to cryopreserve their embryos to allow for implantation in the future, or choose to terminate or reduce a pregnancy because of birth defects or multiples. With the opportunities presented by reproductive autonomy and choice come legal and ethical chaos of sorts, and a division that pits consent against state and public interest.

As these technologies develop, questions arise as to whether, as a society, we should allow market forces and private contracting to control their use – in effect allowing the market to decide what is right or wrong. Is leaving development of reproductive technology to the demands of the market equivalent to saying nothing is right or wrong – only efficient or inefficient, wealth maximizing, or not wealth maximizing? Or, rather, does the market represent the natural course of change and the inevitable direction of society, with regulation of technology in these areas simply inhibiting progress? There is no single answer to these questions that can be applied across the board to all the various existing and emerging technologies.  I argue, however, that where there is tension between individual reproductive choice and other moral values, the use of reproductive technologies is most often best left to the choice of individuals and the innovation of the market. 

My presentation highlights some of the ethical issues that arise from the reproductive capabilities that have developed over the past decades, focusing specifically on the unique ethical issues that arise from pre-implantation genetic testing. (I will also briefly discuss ethical issues surrounding gamete donation and surrogacy, which can result in more than two legal or biological parents; the creation, selection, freezing, and destruction of embryos; and prenatal testing, selective abortion and selective reduction.) Much of the resistance to these technologies stems from long-held and deeply ingrained beliefs about the purity of reproduction and motherhood. As technology continues to create reproductive possibilities that were once unheard of or considered fantasy, the purity of motherhood, pregnancy, reproduction, and family are threatened, creating controversy and debate. My talk examines some potentially troubling contract clauses that can give reproduction choices to intended parents that did not exist before technology facilitated it. I attribute some of the resulting ethical concern to societal hesitance to deviate from traditional family norms, looking specifically at the sacredness of motherhood and primacy of biology in definitions of parenthood.

Ultimately, I argue for emphasis on consent and market freedom, and for more rigorous and consistent enforcement of reproductive agreements. The law, by its nature, is slow to respond and slow to capture societal mood, which is constantly evolving. Artificial insemination, for example, was originally, over a century ago, thought to be scandalous, but opinions softened eventually. Since law necessarily lags behind social momentum, family law and regulation are often ill equipped to address adequately the myriad ethical issues that have arisen and are likely to arise as technology advances further. Even as family law adapts, it will never be able to keep pace with the rapid developments happening in reproductive technology and accommodate all possible non-normative relationships, ever growing based on cultural and social shifts, and made even more accessible through technology. Regulation of new technologies can thwart progress, inhibiting the development of important medical procedures. Consent, market forces, and contract law, on the other hand, which are based on individual needs, individual desires, and societal demand, are the best arena for dealing with rapid technological momentum.

People have a fundamental right, both morally and legally, to privacy and freedom when it comes to reproduction, so intervention where there are private reproductive agreements is not usually justified. Individual choice should guide reproduction (whether natural or artificially mediated), and a free market and private contracting are the best vehicles for delivering assisted reproductive services and for responding to individual choice. Assisted reproduction, like sexual reproduction, is not a social enterprise. Although it often involves more than two parties, it is still based on private arrangements and should be governed by rules of privacy and autonomy. 

The SSRN link to the full paper is: http//ssrn.com/abstract=2930290

Orit Gan (Sapir College, School of Law) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Gett Abuse

Orit Gan (Sapir College, School of Law)

Under Jewish law divorce occurs when the husband writes and delivers and the wife accepts a gett. Until wife is granted a gett she may not remarry or date. Some men use the gett as a bargaining chip to extort favorable economic divorce agreements. In other words men threaten women by refusing to grant them a gett unless they will succumb to their financial demands. This is gett abuse.

Women who pay for their gett resist enforcement of the divorce agreements by claiming duress, and U.S. courts usually accept such claims. However, based on anti-commodification theories I claim that trading the gett for money should be prohibited. I suggest that gett should be an inalienable right for two reasons. Women pay for a gett under conditions of severe inequality. They are coerced by the necessities of the situation. Moreover, this exchange has a degrading effect. Women's autonomy, dignity and freedom are corrupted and diminished by trading the gett. In an ideal world a gett should not be commodified.

However, we do not live in an ideal world. In today's reality, trading a gett also has advantages for women. Paying for a gett is their only way to break free from the marriage. The alternative is staying married against their will. Furthermore, women bring tort claims against their husbands in civil courts for gett refusal claiming emotional distress. Women then leverage the compensation that they are awarded to get a gett. They use the tort claim to improve their bargaining power and trade the damages awarded for a gett.

Therefore both commodification and non-commodification of gett have both advantages and disadvantages for women. A way out of this double bind dilemma is to recognize incomplete commodification.

The gett abuse analysis has broader implications. For example, the gett abuse analysis may be applicable to custody negotiations. Spouses bargain for their children's custody and maintenance upon divorce. Studies show that women are willing to waive financial rights in order to get custody. This transaction may have the corruption and coercion effects and therefore custody may also be an inalienable right.

Hila Keren (Southwestern Law School) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Emotional Value and the Value of Emotions

Hila Keren, Ph.D. (Southwestern Law School)

American contract law has demonstrated an ongoing and long-lasting reluctance to award remedies to a party to a contract who suffered an emotional harm due to a breach by the other party. Such reluctance stands in clear contrast to the treatment of other harms coming from a breach of contract, namely economic and physical harms. In this paper I argue for equal treatment of all harms caused by a breach of contract and against the legal marking of emotional harms as unfit for the general effort of contract law to compensate injured parties.

For many decades legal theorists have debated the aptness of a special and tightfisted legal response to emotional harms, highlighting both aspects relating to the nature of law and the qualities of the emotions. For example: Is the law, with its rational logic, able to address affective problems? Are emotions uniquely easier to fake or inflate?

My paper brings to the debate a fresh set of arguments. Analyzing the issue from the perspective of the novel approach of law and emotions, I argue that the reluctance to award damages for emotional harms reflects and reinforces law’s “hyper-rationality,” i.e., the broader legal misunderstanding and mistreatment of emotions. More importantly, taking emotions seriously and in an interdisciplinary fashion, I contend that for the last four decades we have been subject to a rapidly increasing dominance of a neoliberal worldview that has operated to reconfigure the meaning of the emotions themselves. This significant shift, I submit, makes compensation for emotional harms more necessary than ever before. 

In particular, I show how neoliberalism has made key positive emotions, such as happiness, an essential part of our human capital and thus has turned these emotions into economic assets—indistinguishable from those the law is eager to protect by contractual remedies. Similarly, neoliberalism has reframed negative emotions of the sort engendered by breach of contract—anxiety or anger for example—as a cause of depreciation of one’s human capital, making such harms impossible to tell apart from other contractual injuries. In a neoliberal world that constantly requires people to invest expensive resources in maintaining their emotional “portfolio,” I conclude, there is an urgent need to bring the conventional reluctance to compensate for emotional harms to an end.

 

Allen Kamp (John Marshall - Chicago) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

WELLNESS PROGRAMS UNDER THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT—A STATUTORY DEFINITION OF “VOLUNTARY”

Allen R. Kamp (John Marshall Law School - Chicago)

          Can Congress force you to eat your broccoli?  To the Supreme Court in NFIB v. Sibelius, the answer is no under the Commerce Clause, but yes under the Taxation Clause.[1] But can your employer force you to eat it? The answer may well be yes.

         An employer could have this ability under wellness programs.” Wellness program” is a defined term under the Affordable Care Act.[2] Wellness programs may include monitoring of vital functions and activity that may report activity 24/7.[3] A certain activity level may be required, for example, 5,500 steps a day. Wellness programs may also require meeting such goals as lowering body/mass ratio or cholesterol levels.[4]

          The ACA authorizes wellness programs if they are “voluntary.” The term is numerically defined, unlike legal definitions of duress and unconscionably, which may invalidate some contracts. Employers can reduce employees’ pay by 30% of the total amount of the insurance costs of the employee’s insurance and be “voluntary.” (The total cost includes both the employee and the employer’s contribution.[5] Thirty percent of the average cost of insurance is more than $5,000 per year.[6] For a low wage employee, this penalty is a high percentage of his income.[7]

          The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a regulation that adopts the ADA definition of “voluntary.” [8]

          Although the definition of voluntary will probably not be decided for years, wellness programs starkly pose the issue of the limits of employer power under the employment contract  Thanks to modern technology, such biometric data as activity level and pulse can be monitored 24/7.[9] A blood test now can reveal he presence of nicotine, cholesterols, glucose, and a great amount of other data such as nicotine use.[10] Should the employer be allowed to monitor employee behavior and vitals 24/7? Wellness programs can include exercise programs (for example, 5,500 steps a day), taking part in health improvement counseling (e.g., weight loss or smoking cessation), and attainment of certain goals, such as lower cholesterol and body/mass index. Should an employer be able to mandate an exercise regime? Should an employer be able to require either achievement of a change in an employee’s body with the threat of sanctions or firing if the change fails to take place?

          The rule may well be that Congress cannot force one to eat one’s broccoli, at least under the Commerce Clause, but one’s employer may well be able to. One can, of course, find another job (one without a wellness program), while one cannot opt out of a federal law. But finding a new job for many is difficult and finding one without a wellness program could be harder.

          We can engage in law professor speculation. Given that assesment to contract terms is found in the most extenuated contexts (See, e.g., Carnival Cruise). Does the ADA definition actually represent  an advance towards a meaningful definition of consent?

          This leads to my final point, which is a dig at my libertarian friends and colleagues. The libertarian premise is that if government power is limited, human freedom is increased. Is there, however, a Law of Conservation of Power in a society parallel to the Law of Conservation of Energy, that the amount of energy in a closed system remains constant? Does the amount of power in a society remain constant, so that if power is diminished in one place it just goes somewhere else?

[1] Nat’l Fed'n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 567 U.S.___ (2012).

[2] Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act § 1201(4), 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-4(j)(1)(A) (2012).

[3] E.g., the Fitbit.

[4] Although many federal statutes regulate wellness, none deal with the problems of employee privacy or employer control over employees per se. Statutes which may apply to wellness programs in are the Affordable Care Act (ACA), The Americans With Disability Act (ADA), the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act (GINA), HIPPA, and Title VII. The main current legal controversies center around the ACA, the ADA and GINA.

[5] 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-4(j)(3)(A) (2012).

[6] Letter from Congressional Members, Robert C. Scott, Elizabeth Warren, Patty Murray, Louis McIntosh Slaughter, Richard Blumenthal, Janice D. Schakowsky, and Sherrod Brown to Jerry R. Yang, Chair of the EEOC (Feb. 2, 2016), http://democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/sites/democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/files/2016-02-11%20Letter%20to%20EEOC%20Chair%20Yang%20re.%20GINA%20Proposed%20Rule.pdf

[7] This brings the ACA into conflict with at least two other federal acts, the ADA and GINA. Both prevent health information from being disclosed to the employer. Note that the ADA is a law designed to prevent discrimination against the disabled and focuses on that problem, not the privacy aspects of wellness programs. The ADA defines “voluntary” as not being based on any sanction for non-agreement to participation in a wellness program. GINA has a similar provision, with the non-disclosure extending to spouses. So which Act controls? At present it is open question. The ACA is the later act and following the ADA or GINA would make its voluntary section meaningless. But the ACA Regulations do say that the ACA does not limit the ADA. The AARP has sued the E.E.O. C., seeking to have the regulation invalidated. See Complaint,  ww.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/aarp_foundation/litigation/pdf-beg-02-01-2016/AARP-v-EEOC-complaint.pdf

[8] (3) Incentives offered for employee wellness programs. The use of incentives (financial or in-kind) in an employee wellness program, whether in the form of a reward or penalty, will not render the program involuntary if the maximum allowable incentive available under the program (whether the program is a participatory program or a health-contingent program, or some combination of the two, as those terms are defined in regulations at 26 CFR 54.9802-1(f)(1)(ii) and (iii), 29 CFR 2590.702(f)(1)(ii) and (iii), and 45 CFR 146.121(f)(1)(ii) and (iii), respectively) does not exceed:

(i) Thirty percent of the total cost of self-only coverage (including both the employee's and employer's contribution) of the group health plan in which the employee is enrolled when participation in the wellness program is limited to employees enrolled in the plan;

(ii) Thirty percent of the total cost of self-only coverage under the covered entity's group health plan, where the covered entity offers only one group health plan and participation in a wellness program is offered to all employees regardless of whether they are enrolled in the plan;

(iii) Thirty percent of the total cost of the lowest cost self-only coverage under a major medical group health plan where the covered entity offers more than one group health plan but participation in the wellness program is offered to employees whether or not they are enrolled in a particular plan; and

(iv) Thirty percent of the cost of self-only coverage under the second lowest cost Silver Plan for a 40-year-old non-smoker on the state or federal health care Exchange in the location that the covered entity identifies as its principal place of business if the covered entity does not offer a group health plan or group health insurance coverage.

29 C.F.R. 1630 (d) (2). Published 5/17/16, e-version.

 [9] See webpage of Fitbit advertising the use of the device in wellness programs.

[10] My latest blood test showed that I drink too much water and consume too many saturated fats and sugars.

Guy Rub (Ohio State) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Copyright Survives: Rethinking the Copyright-Contracts Conflict

Guy A. Rub (The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law)

Copyright law consists of legal norms that govern certain actions with respect to creative works fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Contracts allow individuals to create legal norms with respect to creative (and non-creative) works that are fixed (and those that are not fixed) in a tangible medium of expression. This potential overlap in legal norms can create tension between the two. This tension is typically discussed under the auspice of copyright preemption doctrine.

The leading decision on this matter is Judge Easterbrook’s 1996 decision in ProCD v. Zeidenberg. In that case, the Seventh Circuit held that a contract that restricted the use of factual information was not preempted by the Copyright Act and therefore enforceable. The reaction among copyright scholars was swift and passionate. In dozens of articles and books, spreading over two decades, scholars cautioned that if the ProCD approach is broadly adopted, the results would be dire. Through contracts, the rights of copyright owners would run amok, expand, and in doing so they would invade, shrink, and possibly destroy the public domain. Contracts, we were repeatedly warned throughout the years, would kill copyright law.

 This Article challenges this scholarly consensus by studying the 288 court opinions that have dealt with the copyright-contract conflict over the past four decades. This examination reveals surprising facts: Notwithstanding the scholars’ warnings, ProCD’s approach won the day and was embraced by most federal circuit courts. However, the doomsday scenarios scholars warned against did not materialize. The overall effect of contracts on the size and scope of the public domain, or over copyright law as a whole, seems minimal. The Article explains this discrepancy and shows that contracts are an ineffective tool to control information because they are too weak of a device to threaten or replace copyright law. Indeed, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of copyright were greatly exaggerated.

 The Article concludes by placing this analysis in context, as part of a broader ongoing discussion on the desirability and enforceability of standard-form agreements.

 The Article is available for SSRN download here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2926253

Eric Zacks (Wayne State) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

The Statute of Limitations, Res Judicata, and Acceleration Clauses in Mortgage Foreclosures

Eric A. Zacks (Wayne State University Law School)

ABSTRACT

The high volume of foreclosures during and following the Great Recession in the United States has led to the revelation of many troubling lending practices. It also has led to problematic judicial decisions that erode borrower protection by curtailing or eliminating procedural requirements and substantive defenses with respect to foreclosure. My article examines the treatment of statute of limitation and related defenses after a loan has been accelerated following a default. In particular, one would expect the formalism that is used to justify strict enforcement of the loan instruments for foreclosure purposes would also be employed when mortgagors fail to comply with statutory, common law, or contractual requirements regarding mortgage assignment, enforcement, acceleration, or foreclosure. In each instance, however, mortgagors are often instead protected by a contextual or equitable approach that seeks to preserve their right to foreclose. Some courts have ignored the traditional rule that acceleration under a contract starts the clock for statute of limitation purposes or that acceleration consolidates the loan instrument into a single obligation as opposed to an installment obligation. Instead, these courts have permitted lenders to accelerate loans repeatedly without triggering the statute of limitations or res judicata defenses. Consequently, lenders are permitted to assert foreclosure claims with respect to the same underlying debt amount over and over again. Instead of being used as a last-resort, acceleration and the subsequent foreclosure process can now be wielded as a significant threat to borrowers throughout the life of their home loan. My article explores the tendency of, and justification for, adjudicators to liberalize the foreclosure process and provides a critique of this approach.

Michael Malloy (Pacific McGeorge) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

 

Michael P. Malloy, Ph.D. (University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law)

Contracts in a Digital Age: My Teenaged Tech Advisors Rescue Dad

Abstract

Contracting in a digital age isn’t just a change in time or place, it is in many respects potentially a change in orientation. Confronting that change initially involved improvising an assimilation of e-contracting into our unstated assumptions about the way contracts are created and the way they are performed, but some adjustment in the framework has been necessary as e-contracting has flourished. It has now been 25 years since the Third Circuit decided Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology, subjecting box top terms to those assumptions, and 20 years since the Seventh Circuit decided ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, distinguishing Step-Saver and embracing shrink wrap terms, leading the way to the easy application of click wrap terms. As we have moved from telex to facsimile, to e-mail, to texting, to direct communication between computers, and so on to as yet unknown methods – new technology almost always creates new challenges for contract law. My paper calls for the recognition of new analysis and adaptable principles for electronic contracting on its own terms, but without abandoning the objectives underlying contract law.

 

Eyal Zamir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Pricing Methods, Marketing Techniques, and the Law of Consumer Contracts

Eyal Zamir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law)

(Based on a forthcoming book, Behavioral Law and Economics (co-authored with Doron Teichman, OUP)) 

Introduction

             In our daily life, we all manipulate, and are being manipulated by, others. As Eladar Shafir has put it, being manipulated is an integral part of the human condition. Marketeers do it for a living.

            Firms employ various marketing and pricing methods, which arguably exploit consumers’ heuristics and biases, to enhance their sales and profits. Some of these techniques are clearly illegitimate and even illegal. Others raise difficult questions regarding their legitimacy and the appropriate legal response to them. In my presentation I will describe a few pricing and marketing techniques that are not obviously illegitimate, and raise the question of whether they should be regulated. I intentionally use the language of “raise the question,” because I will not offer definitive answers.

            The methodological perspective I use is commonly described as behavioral law and economics. A primary contribution of behavioral law and economics lies in the identification of behavioral market failures. In addition to traditional market failures, such as monopolies and information problems, markets may fail to promote social utility due to deviations from the assumption that all players in the market are rational maximizers of their utility.

            However, I will not limit myself to the behavioral-economic perspective, as behavioral insights are equally relevant to non-economic perspectives that highlight other values in lieu of, or in addition to, maximizing aggregate human welfare. These include respect for autonomy, fairness, and distributive justice.

            However, due to time limitations, I will neither be able to consider all of these perspectives, nor to delve into the choice between different regulatory measures: disclosure duties, compulsory interventions, and mere nudges. Some people identify the behavioral perspective with the use of nudges, but this is a mistake. Behavioral findings may justify more intrusive regulation. I believe that mandatory regulation is often warranted, and that paternalism—despite its bad PR—is often justified. But I will not go into these issues today.

            Relatedly, the pricing and marketing techniques I will discuss are used not only in consumer transactions, but in commercial ones, as well. Hence, my discussion is not limited to the consumer sphere, although the normative considerations in commercial transactions may be different.

Michael Dorff (Southwestern Law School) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Assessing the Assessment: B Lab's Effort to Measure Companies' Benevolence, Seattle University Law Review, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2017

Michael B. Dorff, Southwestern University School of Law

For benefit corporations to persuade their various audiences that they are as beneficial for society as they claim, they need reliable assessments of their social performance. Even if assessments were not required by most states’ benefit corporation statutes, it is difficult to imagine the benefit corporation form could gain credibility without them. Creating measurement tools for these assessments poses the twin challenges of balancing simplicity against validity and weighing vision against inclusiveness. This article examines how B Lab’s popular assessment tool engages these challenges.

 

SSRN link:  https://ssrn.com/abstract=2911302

Carol Sanger (Columbia) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Contracting for Abortion

KCON 12: Intimate Contracts, Consent, and Commodification Panel

Carol Sanger, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, Columbia University

Contracts between intimates or about intimate subjects are now a regular feature of regular contract law. I have recently written about post- adoption visitation agreements, where birthmothers agree to place a child with an adoptive couple in exchange for visitation rights; Bargaining for Motherhood, 41 Hofstra L. Rev. 309 (2012). This paper concerns not the acquisition of a child, but the promise not to have one by agreeing contractually to abort a pregnancy in exchange for consideration.   The topic arose as part of my inquiry into what men take into account when decisions about the disposition of an embryo or fetus is up to them, in such matters as contested embryo cases.  Another source of these decisions is found in surrogacy contracts when the commissioning man (or couple) bargains for the surrogates promise to terminate the pregnancy upon prenatal testing that reveals an anomaly specified in the contract as triggering the abortion provision.  While such contracts have not been specifically enforced, they remain a common feature of surrogacy contracts, perhaps serving an in terrorem function. 

Yet in an interesting 1987 case, L.G. v. H.A.G., the Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a contract between a father and his adult unmarried daughter where he promised to reinstate her in his will if she terminated her pregnancy.  She did, but he didn’t.  The Court found there was nothing against public policy or illegal per se in the daughter’s promise. Indeed, “family harmony and reconciliation were also involved and both … naturally encouraged as a matter of public policy.”  The case puts women’s abortion decisions in an economic framework, and suggests that fathers too have interests in reproductive decisions for which they too are willing to bargain.  

This paper draws from the chapter “Fathers and Fetuses: What Would Men Do” in my new book About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21^st Century America (Harvard U.P.,  March, 2017).

Gastón de los Reyes (George Washington University: Business) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

Not from guile, but from entitlement: Lawful opportunism haunts the cracks in contracts

Gastón de los Reyes and Kirsten Martin (George Washington University School of Business)

Abstract (KCON Presentation by Gastón de los Reyes)

Opportunistic acts are not all cut from the same cloth. While the blatant opportunism that results from “self-interest seeking with guile” is widely acknowledged, the lawful opportunism that Williamson paints as the bane of hybrid governance remains obscure and little understood. We examine the construct of lawful opportunism and empirically explore its connection to the known and studied contracting behaviors of blatant opportunism and cooperation. Using a series of contracting vignette surveys, we demonstrate that lawful opportunism is a theoretically distinct intended behavior across a variety of contracting scenarios. A contractor’s sense of entitlement, we find, is the primary driver of intended lawful opportunism. In contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, the more a contractor views the exchange in economic terms, the less likely they are to act with blatant opportunism. The study has implications for the study of contracting and hybrid governance across disciplines and for prescription to contracting parties.

Chris Odinet (Southern University) - KCON Scholarship Spotlight

The conference is over but the scholarship lives on. This is one of a series of posts highlighting several KCON XII presenters who graciously provided me with abstracts or summaries of their presentations.

BITCREDIT: MARKETPLACE LENDING AND CONSUMER PROTECTION 

Christopher K. Odinet

 Abstract

The digital economy is changing everything, including how we borrow money. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, banks pulled back in their lending and, as a result, many consumers and small businesses found themselves unable to access credit. In the space left vacant by these traditional financial institutions have come a wave of online firms called marketplace lenders. These platforms are fast making antiques out of many mainstream lending practices, such as face-to-face interviews with loan officers and long paper applications. Instead, through underwriting by automation—utilizing big data (including social media data)—loan processing that once took weeks can now be done overnight. The result of these technological advances has been quicker access to capital, more economic efficiencies, and even greater prospects for access to credit for theunbanked and underbanked. “Click here” is the new “sign on the dotted line.”

 But there is a lot still to learn about the online lending marketplace. How do these marketplace lenders work and what kinds of products do they offer? Moreover, what role will they play in the future of American debt and credit markets? This Article explores these questions and assesses current government responses to the nascent industry. It also surveys the currentregulatory landscape for marketplacelenders and analyzes a multi-year dataset of complaints submitted to the CFPB relative to consumer loans offered by these firms.The Article concludes by offering some broad policy considerations for how investors, small businesses, and consumers could be protected in this new world of BitCredit.