Hello. Welcome to my website. It started while I was in Europe for a semester, and I've kept it up since then. I'm now at the University of Chicago Law School, living in Hyde Park, and the story continues. If you want to say hi or visit me, email cfloyd at uchicago dot edu.
"Life is nothing if not the sum of your anecdotes." -Scotty The Body, on storytelling "But it ain't that bad, man. Just figure out the system before the system figures out you." -T. Matthew Smith, on the 1L year "The beer just doesn't taste as good when you're not drinking it with your buddies." -Anon., on being away from good friends "Somebody has to pay the rent around here. Why the hell not us?" -Cotton, on studying for exams
6/06/2004
My Contracts exam is tomorrow. Oh. This is after midnight. So my Contracts exam is today. The course was taught by Eric Posner, whose lecture style is about as dry as they come. But you know dryness, it's perfect for wit. So here are several quotations from class so you can peer into the surreal world of a first-year Contracts course. There are a whole bunch. Oh, and the only people who may find these funny are law students and lawyers. (courtesy Brian Perez-Daple)
Posner: “Is this even a breach of contract case? No! This is a quantum meruit case! What it’s doing in this contracts book I don’t know.”
Mr. Pawson (student): “I mean, looking at the dates here, I don’t think it’s likely that he was harvesting right around New Year’s time.”
Posner: “Maybe it’s an ice farm.”
Pawson: “Touché.”
P: “But remember, there’s what’s called, uh, constructive discharge, I think, or something like that…I used to teach employment law but I’ve since forgotten everything about it.”
Posner: “So for those of you who saw the Coase lecture yesterday, it’s actually relevant to class. …Maybe for the first time ever…”
P: “What could be more fungible than a tomato? What could be easier to value?”
Mr. Ruben: “Is this whole issue because we’re in equity court and not law court?”
Posner: “No. …oh yeah we are. I was just guessing. I don’t know…”
P: “Is [an Indy Pacecar] unique? No! Here’s what you’re supposed to think of when you think of unique – Picasso’s Guernica. That’s unique! There’s only one!”
P: “Does anyone have a good counterargument? …Wait, you just made the argument. You are estopped from making the counterargument.”
P: “She works for him, taking care of him, and when he dies, she gets the house. Okay there might be some funny incentives there, right?”
P: “It’s our old friend, The Statute of Frauds, rearing its ugly head!”
P: “Should the creditor have known?”
Girl: “No, I don’t think so.”
P: “Well, almost.”
Girl: “So I guess, yes?”
P: “Yes.”
P on Duncan v. Black: “You can’t grow unless you have an allotment from the county. Can that be in our free market economy? It sounds like socialism!”
P: “Well it does seem silly but we have to have some elaborate theory before we can decide it’s silly.”
P: “If there’s a law student involved [in a case in a casebook] we know he’s going to lose.”
P: “That’s a lot of work, taking care of cows for 38 days. You have to feed them, exercise them, hose them down…”
P: “Freerider? What’s a freerider?”
P: “I don’t know what these guys do. Does anyone know what managers do? Has anyone ever managed something?”
P: “Critics destroy things!”
P: “Then why don’t we just say, ‘Look you idiot, you shouldn’t have entered into this contract in the first place’?”
P: “He’s saying, ‘Look, judge – dummy…”
P: “It’s a joke. Well, it’s sort of like a joke, except the joke is on the Mexican government, or the US government.”
P: “What could the seller end up being bound to do? Delivering a gazillion barrels of salt, the whole universe of salt! And we don’t think the seller should be bound to delivering all the salt in the universe, right?”
P: “It’s kind of pointless, to tell you the truth, but it’s a good exercise.”
P: “Does anybody know why the price goes up? Anyone besides Mr. Hsiung? You don’t need a PhD from MIT to know why the price goes up.”
P: “That brings us to Davis v. Jacoby, this heartbreaking saga on pg. 372.”
P: “The Whiteheads were off in California, which of course is their problem because we all know California is corrupt and hedonistic, and they call on the Canadians to help them.”
P: “These cases are a bit complicated so…sooo, I don’t know, so I hope you read them. Or I hope you read them carefully and recently.”
P: “Is it cold in here? Why? Why is it cold?”
P: “It’s getting warmer isn’t it? It’s the heat of intellectual excitement.”
P: “Luckily promissory estoppel is the knight in shining armor that gallops to the rescue.”
P: “In some cases the person may work out to be great but in some cases the guy won’t make any money because he’s a loser! …oh sorry. Should I not have said that? ‘His talents lie elsewhere.’”
P: “As a result, instead of having the mirror image rule, which I really like, we have the impossible to understand §2-207. Idaho Power is a case that will show you just how wonderful the mirror image rule really is.”
P on UCC § 2-207: “It’s really awful isn’t it? This section? And we’re only scratching the surface of its horribleness.”
P: “So everybody hates 2-207…and as a result of that the UCC has revised it. But don’t worry, all your newly won knowledge is not yet obsolete.”
P: “This was the old days when people still had books and paper and read things…”
P: “These were the dark ages! In those days you couldn’t just type in somebody in Google and get their address and their home phone number and social security number and medical records...”
P: “That’s so primitive [buying something in a store], you know you’d have to walk into a building and interact with another human being. Now you can just stay in your basement.”
P: “Price discrimination! Isn’t that a bad thing? It sounds bad. It’s a kind of discrimination.”
P: “Now what if the term inside was, ‘Surprise! U pay us $10,000’?”
P: “So much for that. Shrink wrap licenses are enforceable. That’s the lesson for today.”
P: “It’s been told to me that Easterbrook didn’t follow Wisconsin law in this case [Pro CD] by people who know Wisconsin law, but in any event, it’s Wisconsin law now.”
P: “Okay, so we’re going to descend from the ether to the comforting world of the parole evidence rule.”
P: “They don’t want the sympathetic victim of their exploitative practices to come up with a story about an oral promise saying they’re wrong.”
P: “The Restatement does a really bad job, nonetheless it’s worth reading.”
P: “Oh I was being sarcastic. You might have missed that.”
P: “It seems kind of hard to tell them ‘You’re supposed to predict Pearl Harbor.’ Nobody else did.”
P on Chase Precast Corp. v. John J. Paonessa Co: “Median barriers! Yes, what could be more interesting?”
P: “Don’t be disappointed if your favorite doctrine isn’t represented on the exam.”
P: “Suppose you borrow a lot of money and your creditors come after you and all you own are the clothes on your back, a few appliances, a car, some jewelry, a few race horses, and some other stuff…”
P: “Something like a million people file for bankruptcy every year and their debts just disappear.”
P: “So before I go driving I enter into a contract with somebody I know doesn’t have any assets – my cat maybe – and then when I get in an accident I tell whoever I hurt “Go sue my cat. Why not?”
P: “The city’s going to have to sue the contractor – or at least demand more generous bribes or something like that.”
P: “You mean ‘intended beneficiaries’ in a common sense way, not in a legal way.”
P: “Estoppel is just one of those things you say if nothing else works.”
P: “Yeah? Is that right? I guess that’s right. I only remember parts of this case also.”
P: “So the question is, is servicing a vending machine more like fixing manhole covers or producing a drama of Shakespearean quality?”
P: “Shakespeare is the heavyweight champion of literature.”
P: “If you take the class on sales – I don’t know whether we offer that class – or the class on secure transactions…”
P on our final exam: “Two parts: Part one is a ridiculous fact pattern; part two is a ridiculous fact pattern. They’re just different.”
P on use of abbreviations in writing an exam: “It’s your risk. If I can’t understand it, then I can’t understand it. If I can understand it, I can understand it. …Try to avoid Latin. I don’t like Latin.”
