Warning
Info
- - tl;dr
- - ICRA
- - Facts & Holding
- - DeepDive
0 0
Court of Special Appeals of Maryland - 53 Md. App. 656
Tags: Contracts, Breach, Remedies, Damages, Reliance damages
tl;dr:
Plaintiff formed a promotional entertainment partnership and wanted to raise money through selling public stock. They hired Defendant law firm partner to incorporate their corporation, but Defendant negligently failed to structure the company properly.Video Summary
Case Summary
In the 1983 case, Wartzman v. Hightower Productions, Ltd., the Maryland Court of Special Appeals dealt with a breach of contract dispute involving a corporation and its attorney. Hightower Productions, Ltd. formed with the goal of setting a flagpole sitting world record by singer-entertainer Woody Hightower. To do this, they hired lawyer Paul Wartzman to properly incorporate the venture and obtain authorization for stock sales to fund the project. However, Wartzman failed in these tasks.
As a result, the project was abandoned, and Hightower Productions sued Wartzman for breach of contract and negligence, seeking damages for expenses incurred based on their reliance on the contract. The jury awarded $20,000 in damages to the plaintiff, which Wartzman appealed, claiming the damages were excessive and speculative, and that Hightower Productions didn't mitigate its losses.
The appellate court upheld the award, stating that the plaintiff was entitled to recover damages for expenses incurred in reliance on the contract. The court rejected Wartzman's argument that the plaintiff should have hired another attorney, as this would create an additional burden and not guarantee success.
This case is important because it highlights the principles and limitations of reliance damages in contract law. Reliance damages aim to return the injured party to the position they would have been in had the contract not been made, but are subject to restrictions such as foreseeability, causation, certainty, mitigation, and avoiding double recovery. The case also demonstrates how courts may award damages for out-of-pocket expenses incurred as a result of contract reliance, particularly in cases where expectation damages are too speculative or uncertain.
DeepDiveHighlight a legal term to see the definition
The case involves a dispute between Hightower Productions LTD. and their law firm over breach of contract and negligence. Hightower sued the law firm for failing to prepare an offering memorandum and ensure that the corporation made the required disclosures to prospective investors. The jury awarded Hightower $170,508.43 in damages, but the law firm appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in allowing Hightower to recover "reliance damages" or "development costs." The court held that the recovery of damages based on reliance interest is limited, and the breaching party can avoid being a guarantor of the success of the venture by proving loss. The contention that allowing reliance damages in a case makes the breaching party an insurer of the venture is without merit.
LSD+ Case Briefs
Features
- DeepDive for detailed case analysis
- Over 50,000 existing case briefs
- Instant briefs for another 6,000,000 cases
- Highlight dictionary for legal term definitions
- Social learning with chat and high points
Over 50,000 Cases Briefed
LSD+ gives you access to over 50,000 case briefs, more than anyone else. Be the first to email us the website of a case brief product that offers you more case briefs and we'll give you a free year of LSD+.
14-Day Free Trial
Unlimited access. Read as much content as you want during your trial with no device limitations. Cancel any time during your trial and keep access for the full 14 days.
Integrated Legal Dictionary
Lawyers and judges love to use big words. And Latin, for some reason.
Highlight a legal term in LSD Briefs and get an instant, plain English definition. Try highlighting contract or specific performance. No need to search or read through a list of definitions, simply highlight the words you don’t know and our LSDefine integration will instantly give you a definition to any of over 30,000 legal terms.
DeepDive
DeepDive allows you to explore legal cases like never before. DeepDive offers multiple levels of case summaries, which empowers you to quickly and easily find the information you need to stay on top of readings. Easily navigate through summary levels and click on any text to get more detail, all the way down to the original legal case text.
Brief anything. Instantly.
Our proprietary state-of-the-art system can instantly brief over 6,000,000 US cases. That means we can probably brief that case that your professor assigned last night when she sent you a poorly scanned pdf and told you to read every third paragraph. Or maybe she uploaded it to Canvas and didn’t really tell you to read it, but you know you probably should. Tenure does wild things to good people.
Social Learning with Chat and High Points
Study groups are a great way to learn and explore a case. LSD has chat rooms for each case to let you ask questions across the community and hear what other students struggled with and how they put it all together. Learn the key points of every case from other LSD+ users and share your knowledge with LSD High Points.
Real-Time Brief Feedback
Don’t settle for mistakes in briefs that have been there for 10 years and never fixed. Find an issue or something missing from a brief? Down vote and we will make improvements. All of our case brief editors graduated from from T14 law schools.