New Beginnings provides rehabilitation services for alcohol and drug abuse to both adults and adolescents. New Beginnings
Question:
New Beginnings provides rehabilitation services for alcohol and drug abuse to
both adults and adolescents. New Beginnings entered into negotiation with Adbar
for the lease of a building in the city of St. Louis, and subsequently entered into a
three-year lease. The total rent due for the three-year term was $273,000. After
the lease was executed, the city denied an occupancy permit because Alderman
Bosley and residents testified at a hearing in vigorous opposition to the presence
Chapter 19 Discharge of Contracts 431
of New Beginnings in the neighborhood. A court ordered the permit issued.
Alderman Bosley thereafter contacted the chair of the state’s appointment
committee and asked her to pull the agency’s funding. He received no
commitment from her on this matter. After a meeting with the state director of
Alcohol and Drug Abuse where it was asserted that the director said the funding
would be pulled if New Beginnings moved into the Adbar location, New
Beginnings’s board decided not to occupy the building. Adbar brought suit for
breach of the lease, and New Beginnings asserted it was excused from
performance because of commercial impracticability and frustration of purpose.
Do you believe the doctrine of commercial impracticability should be limited in
its application so as to preserve the certainty of contracts? What rule of law applies
to this case? Decide. [Adbar v New Beginnings, 103 SW2d 799 (Mo App)]
Appendix
Step by Step Answer:
Anderson's Business Law And The Legal Environment
ISBN: 9780324638189
20th Edition
Authors: David P Twomey, Marianne M Jennings, Ivan Fox