Charitable Pledges: Contracts of Confusion

With postmortem enlightenment, Jacob Marley\u27s ghost sternly forewarns Ebenezer Scrooge to embrace the business of charity, which Marley\u27s ghost associates with mercy, forbearance, and benevolence. This Article analyzes an aspect of the business of charity tainted with stealth bordering on trickery, mandatory ingratitude, and judicial contrivances. This Article seeks to make two contributions to the important debate about the enforceability of charitable pledges. First, new empirical evidence developed for this Article indicates approximately 95 percent of charities fail to disclose in their pledge forms that the donor will be legally bound to make all the pledge payments. Despite the absence of an agreement to be bound, consideration, or substantial detrimental reliance, courts almost always enforce charitable pledges. Second, this Article proposes reforming this sullied aspect of the business of charity with a new, workable approach focusing on traditional contract rules, basic promissory estoppel doctrine, and the donor\u27s intent

Should Organizations Promoting Dangerous Sports Enjoy Maximum Tax Benefits?

Perhaps one in every 1000 BASE jumps results in death, and the fatality and injury rates for BASE jumping may be forty-three times higher than for standard skydiving. Some other new sports are extremely dangerous. In addition, some medical researchers are finding that repeated jolts to the head in traditional contact sports correlate to midlife Alzheimer’s disease, suicide, depression, inability to work or function without a caregiver, and early death from the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). “[N]early a quarter of a million new patients turn up each year with long-term deficits resulting from . . . so-called mild traumatic brain injur[i]es.” Nevertheless, our tax laws still treat injury risks as irrelevant and may grant maximum tax benefits to any nonprofit organization teaching and promoting any legal sport. The current approach helps grant cultural cover for dangerous sports and provides government subsidies through tax benefits. This Article challenges the current approach and addresses the very practical question: which current doctrine should a court or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) use in determining whether an organization promoting dangerous activities deserves most favored tax status? Recent psychological research on risky behavior supports this Article’s proposal

Charitable Naming Rights Transactions: Gifts or Contracts?

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Contract Law’s “Too Good to Be True” Doctrine—Is It?

In a wonderful variety of emotionally charged contract law opinions, including the cases of the boastful cheater, the opportunistic attorney, and the careless concrete contractor,3 courts unfortunately have used the phrase “too good to be true” as a single-step test to decide enforceability. These cases can generate emotional responses ranging from empathy4 to schadenfreude5 because they involve a mistake with potentially disastrous results for one party (and a windfall for the other side). It is understandable that courts would be drawn to a catchy, down-to-earth phrase to reach a just resolution in these entertaining and memorable cases. Nevertheless, this Article argues that using too good to be true as a single-step test violates fundamental policies of contract law. Judicial too-good-to-be-true pronouncements appear arbitrary and unpredictable, likely undermining public confidence in the enforceability of contracts.6 As an alternative, sophisticated, time-tested, multi-factor doctrines are available to achieve just results in these cases.7 Accordingly, this Article argues that the phrase “too good to be true” should be expunged from the tool kits of decision-makers and advisors involved in contract disputes