Posner and Molo on Contract Disruption: Impossibility, Material Adverse Events, Force Majeure - Rights and Remedies in Light of the Crisis

Overview

Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Time: 12:30 p.m. ET | 9:30 a.m. PT

Cost: Complimentary

Sponsored by:

The COVID-19 pandemic and government shutdown orders have caused massive disruption to contractual relationships. Corporations and businesses may be headed towards bankruptcy.

Virtually all lawyers with commercial clients will face contractual disputes arising from this disruption. Many contracts include force majeure clauses that excuse parties from performing their contractual obligations if a natural disaster or government order renders performance difficult or impossible.

Contracts governing corporate acquisitions typically include material adverse change or material adverse event clauses that have a similar meaning. Courts have historically read these clauses narrowly, raising questions about how they will be applied during the COVID-19 crisis.

We will discuss the risks and opportunities from invoking these clauses, and how lawyers should advise clients who seek to take advantage of clauses or doctrines that excuse performance.

Join this webcast to learn how to advise clients whose operations and contractual relationships have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with litigating or arbitrating these issues, participants will understand:

• Contract enforcement rights in light of COVID-19. 
• The uses and limits of the impossibility doctrine, force majeure, material adverse event, and related contract concepts during the pandemic.
• How the pandemic is different from previous natural disasters that have disrupted contractual relationships, and how this might affect adjudication of contract disputes caused by the pandemic.

REGISTER NOW! (Can’t attend? Register here for an on-demand recording after the webcast.)

Speakers:

Steven Molo | Partner Steven Molo is one of the country’s leading litigators and a partner in the national litigation boutique MoloLamken LLP. The firm represents clients throughout the world in business litigation and arbitration, white collar criminal matters and investigations, and intellectual property disputes. Each of the past two years, the National Law Journal named MoloLamken the winner of its Elite Trial Lawyers Award in the category of business torts.

Eric Posner | Of Counsel Eric Posner is one of the country’s most respected legal scholars and is of counsel to MoloLamken. He is the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair at the University of Chicago Law School. He has taught contract law for 25 years and is the author of Contract Law and Theory (Wolter Kluwers, 2d ed. 2015).