My expectations were unclear, as I had sat in a Torts class before, but this time I sat in a Contracts class. Upon entering the classroom, I immediately noticed how large it was and that being in the third row on the top half meant being really far away from the professor, which is usually a bad experience for me. I personally prefer being …show more content…
We covered Valley Medical Specialists v. Farber at the beginning of class. Valley Medical Specialists hired Steven Farber, an internist and pulmonologist, who eventually became a shareholder and director (447-8). Dr. Farber entered into a new stock and an employment agreement, which contained a restrictive covenant. He eventually left VMS and began practicing within the area defined by the restrictive covenant (448). VMS then filed a complaint blaming Dr. Farber for violating the restrictive covenant. The trial court found that the restrictive covenant violated public policy or alternatively, that it was too broad. The court of appeals reversed, concluding that a modified covenant was reasonable. One of the issues in this case is regarding the scope of the restrictions- they must be reasonable and the restrictions VMS had on Dr. Farber were beyond the necessary actions to protect VMS. The language of the restriction was too broad and affected the patients in the geographical area that needed access to care. The court finally concluded that the restrictive covenant between VMS and Dr. Farber cannot be enforced because the public policy implications were too great. Professor Pike made a point that the law governing non-competition agreements is a mess and he asked a variety of questions to the class. The students seemed to be eager to work out their examples related to the …show more content…
Walker-Thomas Furniture, which dealt with a divorced woman with limited education who was supporting herself and seven children by means of public assistance and a furniture company who let her buy many household items on an installment plan. She signed a total of fourteen contracts without fully reading or understanding them. She admitted that she did not ask anyone to explain the contracts to her, but the furniture place did not provide her with a copy either (456). There was a finding that the furniture store knew that Ms. Williams was living off a government allowance of $218 a month and still let her enter into a contract- selling her a stereo for $514. This case dealt with unconscionability. Unconscionability includes “an absence of meaningful choice on the part of one of the parties together with contract terms which are unreasonably favorable to the other party (458).” The primary concern when determining reasonableness of the terms of the contract is to take it in light of the circumstances when the contract was made (458). The court held that the case must be remanded to the trial court for further proceedings because the court was unable to correctly identify the contract as unconscionable. I found this case more interesting than the other one. The points brought up in this case were challenging and difficult to conclude, which I could gather from the questions presented by Professor Pike and the students. Contracts are very