Why are courts so hesitant to award specific performance?

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For not giving a Super Bowl ring to someone to be breach of contract, wouldn't the ring and/or Super Bowl winnings have to be written into the contract? I have no idea if it is or isn't but my guess is that's it's not talked about in the contracts but more of something assumed.

Also I believe I've read some where the rings are normally considered a gift from the owners (at least in the in the NFL legal writing) and therefor the NFL and Owners lawyers would argue that point, saying Owners can choose to give or not give a gift to whom ever you choose.

In the Packers case, Mark Murphy and some of the top staff might do that instead of the Owners.

Of course you can try to sue about anything... but it doesn't mean you won't lose and have the pay the lawyer bills of both sides.

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Rourke:
Courts don't like ordering people to take a specific action. They tend to focus instead on "making the injured party whole," on providing the value they would have received but for the breach. And they tend to think "a dollar worth of value" is the same everywhere.

Specific performance requires them to say "this particular value can only be received one way.

Its the difference between buying a house and agreeing to mow the house's lawn. If I pay a kid to mow my lawn and he doesn't do it, I can hire someone else to do it instead. My "damages" are the money I paid the kid. So the court would award me those damages (make the first kid repay me) and I'm where I'd be without the breach, with the lawn mowed minus the cost of mowing. On the other hand, if the kid's dad agrees to sell me his cool house next to Jessica Biel's mansion, the only way I'm going to get what I expected is if I get *that* house. If I just get my money back, I'm still without being able to see Jessica in a bikini from my back yard. I haven't been made, er, whole.


Beast:
I didn't say the sleazy lawyer would win. But I think they'd have a good case -- especially since the Packers ended up with how many people on IR? And if every one of them, except Bell, got a ring worth at least 30,000, it doesn't look all that much like a gift. Getting a ring for the owner's mistress or favorite son is a gift. Giving a Christmas ham to every employee is a gift. Giving a ring worth five figures to every employee....well, if I were an ordinary for-profit enterprise, I wouldn't want to argue to my shareholders that it's a gift.

Do the Packers file a gift tax return for each of the other 150 plus recipients? (Since it's beyond the annual exemption amount, if it's a gift, its a gift subject to the gift tax.)

It smells like an employer holding a grudge getting back at someone for not accepting a lower salary than already promised. (Oh, yes, and if an employer gave everyone a ham except one employee who pissed the boss off ... then I'd make the same argument. That would also smell.)

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Josh Bell didn't want the injury settlement because it was LESS than what he'd get on Inured Reserve. He contributed nothing to the team in leadership or anything of the sort.

Four pages on JOSH BELL??? What, the, HELL!

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Wade,

Out of curiosity would the gift tax apply to the Packers when it's the NFL that buys the 150 rings? I'm guessing that the point of the gift tax above a certain threshold is to prevent companies from dumping off earnings as "gifts" back to investors or employees tax-free instead of with a taxable dividend or income. Would the NFL be the ones to pay the gift tax?

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I agree. He forced the team to pay him $500,000.00, rather than taking a settlement and trying to hook with another team. Makes him less attractive as a player, especially now that he's bitching about wanting a ring.
It's a shame too, because I actually liked Bell. He's a Charlie Peprah type player, at CB.

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What's so wrong with his decision? If he suspected the Packers had a chance to go a long way and perhaps be a perennial winner, wouldn't it make sense to try to hang around and compete for a job the following year?

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](*,) 😣 😣 😣 😣 😣

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It's what I would have done. But why sign a guy if he's gonna force you to pay him a half mil instead of accepting an injury settlement and then try to go actually earn some money somewhere?

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I dunno. Indeed, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure that the gift tax applies to artificial persons (i.e. corporations). It's probably just "meals and entertainment expense" or some such, like the party favors at a corporate-hosted banquet.

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