contract modification

You Discover a Missing Closing Document—Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?

by Brian Rogers on December 21, 2011

Pop quiz: You work for a title company. During a routine audit of your closed files you discover that a lien release is missing from a deal that closed a few years ago. Without the lien release your customer’s house remains subject to a lien granted by the residential developer who sold the lot to your customer. Do you (a) request a lien waiver to make sure things are in order or (b) let sleeping dogs lie?

I’m not going to tell you what I would do, but a recent case decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals (Melson v. Traxler) dealt with just such a scenario. [click to continue…]

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“NO LIMIT” + “Awesome!” = Contract Modification

by Brian Rogers on April 13, 2011

in E-Contracting

Be careful about informal communications with counterparties to your contracts. That’s the key lesson from a case decided by a federal court in Florida last month. In CX Digital Media, Inc. v. Smoking Everywhere, Inc., the court held that a short, informal instant message exchange between two parties to a contract modified the contract—to the tune of about $1.5 million. And the contract contained a provision that required changes to be made in writing.