| Venue: | IN SC |
| Facts: | There's an indemnify and hold-harmless clause in Weaver's filling station franchise contract. A guy from American Oil sprays gas all over Weaver and his assistant, and causes them to be burned on the leased premises. |
| Posture: | Judgment for defendant at trial, affirmed on appeal. |
| Issue: | Is this an unconscionable contract? |
| Holding: | Yes, reversed. |
| Rule: | When you've got exploitation of radically unequal bargaining power, and the lesser party doesn't even know about the exploitation, and there's great hardship, the offending provision (if it's severable) or the contract as a whole (if its not) should not be enforced. |
| Reasoning: | There was no bargaining here-- Weaver was a high-school dropout and
was just told to sign.
A nicely circular discussion of what unconscionability is. Anyway, courts will not permit themselves to be made into instruments of iniquity. We like bright-line rules (i.e., if it's in the contract, we enforce it), but this is too much. You can have exculpation clauses, in principle, but you can't have sneaky hidden ones. |
| Dicta: | Prentice (dissenting): Look, you're bound by the contracts you sign. We can't say whether there was understanding or not, and we're making the author of the contract responsible for what the other party does. This isn't like Bethlehem Steel: there's no national security hanging in the balance. |