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Showing posts from April 5, 2020

The BUSKLAW April Newsletter: Not Another Pandemic Force Majeure Post!

These are sad, strange times. I could tell you all about Michigan law on force majeure, typically embodied by a clause that lawyers throw into the tail-end of a contract as boilerplate, hardly ever thinking that it will ever be invoked. Because force majeure is used to excuse contractual performance, usually on a temporary basis, during an unforeseen event, which in today's environment is the CV-19 pandemic. For example, you propose that the CV-19 pandemic and your State's "stay-at-home" quarantine prevented your workforce from producing those 5,000 widgets and shipping them on time, so you shouldn't be liable to your buyer for breach of the purchase contract. But your buyer may point out that the contract's force majeure clause didn't specifically list pandemics or quarantines as trigger events, so you breached and are liable for damages. Such is the stuff that lawsuits are made of. Highly fact-dependent, highly contract-language dependent. Consider t