[Anyong Bluth]

Originally Posted by alnorth

Yep. The only chance I think they would have (again, not a lawyer) is to make an equity argument that this clause is so grossly unfair that it would lead to unjust enrichment.

As I understand it, "equity" is an unpredictable squirrelly area of the law that tries to address something that is blatantly unfair no matter what the contract may say. For example, if your cell phone contract had a termination penalty of 10 million dollars buried in the fine print, that would get thrown out because of equity. (the "damage" to the cell phone company is clearly nowhere close to 10 million dollars, and the fee is hilariously high)

However, this is the University of Nebraska we are talking about here. Not some little old lady suckered into a bad contract by an unethical salesman. They have access to some of the best legal advice in the country. Plus, the "damages" in the contract do not sound highly unreasonable to me that it would trigger an equity argument. Damages are uncertain, and forgoing a share of revenue for 1 or 2 years sounds like a reasonable remedy.

AlNorth- this isn't directed at you as if I'm saying you're wrong, I just quoted your reply since it continues on the topic of discussion re: NU paying or claiming they don't have to & it's unfair.


This isn’t about unjust enrichment or equity. How are you going to argue that when we aren’t talking about damages, which are speculative? This is a penalty that is spelled out in the by laws that all parties mutually agreed to. When you leave the conference and break the contract, the penalty is spelled out for both leaving and giving 1 years notice and 2 years notice.
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lace w:st="on">Neb.lace> is arguing that since other schools were talking with other conferences about joining that they shouldn’t be forced to pay and will argue they were forced to jump to the B10 for fear that the other schools were going to. The problem is that no other schools besides CU left, and the penalty is for leaving, not talking to other conferences about joining. On top of it, you have to have 9 schools vote in agreement to dissolve the Big12. KSU, KU, MU, Baylor, and ISU were never assured of landing anywhere and viewed by many as possibly being left behind even if the rest did go. All you need is 4 of those schools left behind and the B12 would have remained and those remaining schools would be able to recoup from the ones that left. lace w:st="on">Neblace> chose to jump to the Big 10 before anything else was sorted out, and the language spells out the penalty. It’s not unjust because they broke the contract, and the Big 12 can simply point to the revenue NU generated that was shared that is now lost year after year. Claiming that a new contract that would the B12 more money for the Big 12 doesn’t offset this because for 1 there is no new contract in place, and any new contract that does pay the Big 12 as a whole more would be based upon the a Big 12 that is without NU or CU, so they were no longer an incentive in bargaining between the TV networks and the Big 12 for the new contract.
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