The "buyer's option" contract in Illinois: recent Illinois and Seventh Circuit opinions have recognized a buyer's-option contract that obligates sellers to sell without also requiring buyers to buy. Sellers should review these rulings and take care not to create a buyer's option when they intend to create a binding purchase obligation.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Manufacturers and other vendors often enter into supply agreements with buyers in which the seller agrees to sell products with given specifications to the buyer at a given price, often for a specified period. These agreements also sometimes include a statement of the buyer's estimated...

Waivers of ERISA plan benefits: preventing judicial interpretations of a complex statute from frustrating the statute's simple purpose.
INTRODUCTION A woman has just lost her husband. Among the many other things on her mind, she is worried about her financial security. She has just retired, and her recently deceased husband was two years from retirement. They had planned to fund their retirement through his money...

Data elucidate dermatology malpractice claims, costs.
WASHINGTON -- There is a paucity of data on dermatology-related malpractice suits, but searches of insurance claims and the legal literature show that, while it is still a low-risk field, the average claim payout is now equal to that of other specialties--around $300,000--Dr. Sandra Read said at the American...

Reflections on free exercise: revisiting Rourke v. Department of Correctional Services.
To offer a critical perspective on federal free exercise law, (1) I would like to focus in this talk on a case that I argued in the early 1990s only a few miles from the Albany Law School. At the time I was a law professor at Cornell, and...

Is it illegal to transmit HIV/AIDS? The laws health educators may not know about or teach.
Health textbooks are often lacking information on legal issues concerning HIV/AIDS. However, health educators have a duty to teach accurate information on HIV/AIDS prevention and transmission. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2006) has estimated that 40,000 new cases of HIV/AIDs are reported each year. Approximately 1,280,000...

Narrative, disability, and identity.
INTRODUCTION The articles in this cluster demonstrate that narrative has many meanings and potential uses in the study of disability rights. Like the other contributors, we are strongly committed to scholarship that draws on narrative (Engel and Munger. Rights of Inclusion). We share the sense that narrative...

Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862.
Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862. By Judith Kelleher Schafer. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Pp. xxvi, 204. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8071-2880-5; cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2862-7.) Decades of intensive research about slavery have yielded such a huge and multifaceted historiography...

Preventing dilution of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995: why the FTDA requires actual economic harm.
INTRODUCTION Judicial interpretation of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 (FTDA), (1) which created a federal cause of action to afford famous marks protection against later, unauthorized uses that blur, tarnish, or harm these marks' distinctiveness, (2) has been unnecessarily inconsistent. Courts have reached conflicting conclusions...

Introduction: the Youth Criminal Justice Act - a new era in Canadian juvenile justice?
This issue marks the first anniversary of the proclamation into force of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The title of our Introduction emulates that of an article by Nicholas Bala (1986) on the then-new Young Offenders Act. When the YOA was proclaimed in April 1984, it was widely heralded...

Improving the appellate process worldwide through maximizing judicial resources.
ABSTRACT As the number of cases filed each year has surged, U.S. federal appellate courts have evolved in order to fulfill their core functions of deciding appeals and setting guiding precedent. Many of the challenges created by overwhelming caseloads are also being tackled in foreign judicial systems....