The movie "The Founder" tells the story of Ray Kroc, played by Michael Keaton, a marginally successful traveling salesman for years. The movie starts in 1954 where Ray Kroc is on the road trying to sell multi-spindle milkshake machines to the owners of drive-in restaurants. None of the restaurants are interested, because they don't sell that many milkshakes. He calls his office and finds out that a drive-in wants to buy six, no make that eight machines, he takes Route 66 from the middle of the country to San Bernadino to see what the McDonald brothers are doing that would require eight milkshake machines. Hemeets Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers' speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential.

He works his way in franchising the business. Kroc then looks for ways to improve what the McDonald brothers started. They on the other hand don't want to change anything. Even if it looks to make the business more profitable.

However, Ray Kroc is losing money because he has a contract to pay the McDonald brothers a large percentage of what he gets from each of the franchisees he sets up. He meets a businessman who tells him "You're not in the hamburger business, you're in the real estate business." In the movie Keaton starts to buy up the real estate which he leases back to the franchise.

Soon he is nationwide, and the McDonald brothers in San Bernadino don't know how to handle it. They continually try to put constraints on him.He is now in the position to take the company from the brothers and create a multi-billion-dollar empire.Kroc goes across the country with his strategy. He finally breaches his contract with the brothers by saying to them "Contracts are like hearts.... they're made to be broken." As a real estate operation, he now has the money to outspend the brothers in litigation.

Now to the discussion this week. We all feel that morally if we make a contract then we need to follow through with the contract.The discussion this week borders between the legal and moral ideas that we find in the law of contract.Do you think that if you can outspend or out maneuver a party to a contract that you no longer find satisfactory you should have no legal obligation to perform the contract, or if the obligation does exist you should be able to pay them off with a settlement? Thoughts?