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Litigating Updated Force Majeure Provisions and Impossibility Issues: New Developments and Strategies

A live 90-minute CLE video webinar with interactive Q&A

This program is included with the Strafford CLE Pass. Click for more information.
This program is included with the Strafford All-Access Pass. Click for more information.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

1:00pm-2:30pm EDT, 10:00am-11:30am PDT

Early Registration Discount Deadline, Friday, April 11, 2025

or call 1-800-926-7926
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This CLE course will discuss how the courts have addressed such defenses as force majeure, impracticability, and impossibility, and "change of law" clauses in breach of contract cases. The panel will also review drafting strategies that parties may use to protect themselves from price increases resulting from uncontrollable events such as supply chain disruptions, tariffs, and governmental actions.

Description

Case law has emerged that sharpens and expands our understanding of force majeure clauses and their related provisions and doctrines. Since 2020 and in the wake of unpredictability, instability, and disruptions with respect to everything from pathogens, changing supply-chains and now tariffs, many parties have looked to these clauses and doctrines for relief from their supply obligations. Parties are revisiting the scope and substance of once boiler-plate force majeure clauses in their contracts and are viewing such clauses as a potential risk-transfer tool with an eye toward expanding their reach beyond acts of God and to more human and economic-based issues.

Listen as our authoritative panel discusses what litigating force majeure defenses involves, the ramifications of settlement, the nuts and bolts of statutes of limitations, discovery issues, notice requirements, deadlines that have been or may be triggered, and damages. The panel will also review how well each argument has been received.

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Outline

  1. Force majeure clauses and related doctrines
    1. Impracticability and impossibility
    2. Change of law clauses
    3. Types of cases in which they have been raised
    4. Industries in which the doctrines appear most frequently
    5. The relative success of arguments made
  2. Timeliness and waiver
  3. What facts must be shown
    1. Whether an objective or subjective standard applies to the definition of impossibility
    2. Whether the party invoking the defense contributed to the event
    3. In what fact patterns have force majeure proved most valuable
  4. Conflict of laws issues
  5. Settlement
  6. Recent cases

Benefits

The panel will review these and other critical matters:

  • How force majeure clauses and related doctrines of impracticability and impossibility are similar and different
  • Notice requirements and deadlines
  • How and when such defenses are best raised
  • Burdens of proof
  • Likely fact issues
  • Choice of law issues
  • Best drafting practices for revising force majeure provisions

Faculty

May, Mark
Mark A. May
Shareholder
Dentons

Mr. May is a shareholder at Dentons. He is a litigator with 25+ years of experience. Mr. May actively represents...  |  Read More

Additional faculty
to be announced.
Attend on May 6

Early Discount (through 04/11/25)

Cannot Attend May 6?

Early Discount (through 04/11/25)

You may pre-order a recording to listen at your convenience. Recordings are available 48 hours after the webinar. Strafford will process CLE credit for one person on each recording. All formats include course handouts.

To find out which recorded format will provide the best CLE option, select your state:

CLE On-Demand Video