Twin Cities Business Litigation Blog : Minneapolis Business Litigation Lawyer & Attorney : Gavin P. Craig Law Firm : St. Paul, Twin Cities, Minnesota MN

The recent stories about Miss California have also highlighted another option for the innocent (non-breaching) party to a contract. I am not talking about Carrie Prejean's statements on gay marriage. I am talking about demonstrated breaches of her contract with the Miss USA organization. The Contracts Prof has listed a few, and he wrote an article for the LA Times. 

Donald Trump owns the Miss USA pageant, and apparently the franchise is not getting a lot of publicity - until now. When a party breaches a contract, the other party has options. And continuing on (waiving the breach) is one option.

Carrie Prejean has created a lot of publicity for the pageant; and as they say, all publicity is good publicity. The interest in the pageant will undoubtedly increase because of the controversy. So why would Trump want to eliminate the one party that is effectively publicizing the pageant? He wouldn't. So absent something that makes Prejean's continued participation impossible, the parties will ignore the breach of contract and hope the publicity continues.

Not every breach is a breach.

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TheWSJ and the WSJ Law Blog report that Citigroup picked up it's toys and decided to leave the game. According to the report there is an obscure provision in the bailout package, section 126(c), that says, in essence, that there shall be no liability against a third party for having acquired a target that otherwise was in an exclusivity agreement with someone else.  Would this provision protect Board Members from shareholder suits? 

In other words, there can be no liability for interfering with another's contract. Now I can understand a provision like that if it interfered with the Governments attempts to buy equity in a financial institution. But between private parties?

What a way to run the railroad: Contracts don't matter! This is a very odd public policy decision. I sure we will hear more about this matter at a later time. 

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Here is an interesting article about Big Oil winning one for the shareholders. But, not to worry, the taxpayers get to pay. I wonder if the dividends will get a needed boost. 

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