The BUSKLAW Newsletter

In my experience, trial lawyers have big egos. That's okay because a courtroom isn't a place for the faint of heart, and effective oral advocacy demands a strong personality. But a problem arises if a trial lawyer - in front of a judge - combines their big ego with stubbornness, especially when a point of law is on the table. Then, like a frozen turkey dropped into hot oil , the attorney's case can blow up. This is the scenario that played out in Kent County Judge Christopher Yates' decision in  Amira Medical Staffing v Rachel Richardson, Heather Martin, and Doria Coston.   Defendants Richardson, Martin, and Coston are described as "low-paid health care workers." Plaintiff Amira hired them to provide health services to a patient with a "traumatic brain injury." For some reason, the patient's mother decided to switch to another medical staffing agency, but these three nurses wanted to continue caring for their patient, so they left Amira an...

Little did Mick Jagger know that if only he had added a few words to this rock classic he would have been singing about a classic doctrine in contract law: accord and satisfaction. This doctrine may elicit a "so what," but if you operate a business that invoices and receives payments from customers, you need to know about this doctrine - or face the real potential of economic loss. So bear with me.  Accord and satisfaction is roughly equivalent to a compromise and settlement. In contract law, according to Professor Garner in his Dictionary of Legal Usage (3rd ed.), "an accord is an agreement to substitute for an existing debt or obligation some alternative form of discharging that debt; a satisfaction is the actual discharge of the debt by substituted means." Accord and satisfaction issues commonly arise where a debtor tries to pay less than the amount invoiced for goods or services by a notation on the debtor's check that it's tendered in full paym...

OK, class (as in budding students of contracts and astute readers). Launch your word processing or Adobe ™  Acrobat Reader software and open one of your longer business contracts. Pull up the text "find" feature and search for the following three contractual phrases: best efforts  commercially reasonable efforts   reasonable efforts  Do you have any hits? Regardless, have you ever wondered what these phrases mean? Whether you are on the receiving or giving end of these "efforts" provisions, you should know what you're in for!  The short answer is not a lot. But keep reading .  Many contracting-drafting lawyers are enamored by these phrases. If their client is on the giving end of a contractual duty, they use "commercially reasonable efforts" to perform that duty. But if their client is on the receiving end of a contractual duty, they will argue for a supposedly higher performance standard: "best efforts." But in the words...