Solving Your Problems While Getting You Back to Business
Words in contracts almost always mean something, especially in distributorship agreements, invoices and purchase orders. The thing is, you never really find out what they mean until there is a dispute.
Read the fine print. Everyone has heard that saying. I know it takes time, and who has time these days? Liquidated damages provisions are some of the fine print you should definitely be aware of in your business contracts, because they can come back to bite you. These clauses define in advance, at the time the parties enter into an agreement, the amount of damages one party has to pay the other party in the event of a breach of the contract.
Back to the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision in RBC Nice Bearings, Inc. v. SKF USA, Inc., a fun UCC read for any law junky. You can read my first post on this case here. Manufacturers (if there are any left in Connecticut...) should pay attention to this case. This case is really, really interesting.
I always get a kick when, after reading a case, you get a laugh out of its name. That's one of many takeaways from the Connecticut Supreme Court's recent decision in RBC Nice Bearings, Inc. v. SKF USA, Inc., a Uniform Commercial Code case. These types of cases can only be interesting to UCC geeks like me. Somehow, distributor agreements, contracts, and minimum purchase requirements make it feel like Christmas.
Small businesses often call us and ask if they should cash a check they received from a purchaser or customer that still owes them money. Somewhere at some point they heard that if you do, you are accepting that amount in full satisfaction of the debt, and lose the right to collect any remaining balance. The legal term for this is "accord and satisfaction." Since it comes up so often, we want small businesses to understand a little bit about the concept. "Accord" basically means an agreement. And "satisfaction" in this scenario means exactly that: to satisfy the agreement, or to perfo
