Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted countless contracts of every type and size—from multimillion-dollar agreements in the supply chain to modest leases for “mom-and-pop” stores—and has rendered countless other contracts intolerably costly or risky. Parties have sought to be excused of their contractual obligations by invoking force majeure clauses or extra-contractual theories of impossibility, impracticability, and frustration of purpose.
This comprehensive CLE will detail the factors that courts employ to assess whether a party is excused of its contractual obligations due to a supervening event—factors about which every practitioner who deals with contracts ought to be familiar. There will be a discussion and analysis of the avalanche of COVID-19 judicial decisions, but the lessons to be learned go far beyond this pandemic. This webinar will describe how courts honor the parties’ allocation of risks in their contracts but do not excuse performance simply because a supervening event turns the contract into a bad deal. It will explore the significant hurdles that must be overcome to be excused—including foreseeability and causation. Finally, this program will equip practitioners to draft better force majeure clauses to protect their clients against the next supervening event.