Don Willette Case Study

Don Willette Case Study

All of my life, I have held “The House of God” with the highest of regard and respect. There are certain things and certain actions that simply have no place in a church. One of those actions is entertaining and conducting outside business. If memory serves, Jesus held this same opinion. There was one time when Passover was near that Jesus went to Jerusalem. He found many conducting business in the temple. He turned their tables over and ran them out of the temple. “He said to them, ‘It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers’” (Matthew 12:12, NRSV). The initial business exchange between Don Willetts and me may have very well been the first wrongful act of the case study as well as the reason the problems all started. We first discussed our business in church.

Let us first assume the contract signed by my son and Don Willettes is binding (I will address this later). If that is the case, there may very well be an argument for Don Willettes involving covenants of good faith. According to Jerry Meeks, “It’s not enough to do what the contract says you must do; you’ve got to do it in good faith. And sometimes good faith requires you to do things not expressly re­quired by the contract” (p. 1). Both parties, in good faith, must adhere to the implied covenant of good faith that neither party will do anything which causes the other to not receive the benefits of the agreement. If I choose to no longer sell Scuppernongs to Don, I may have caused him to no longer reap the benefits of the agreement and he may incur damage, thus breaking the covenant.

Don Willettes does not seem to have very many good legs on which to stand. Regarding the issue of Implied Contracts, Don Willettes might argue that one did exist. There was an element of consistency in the way we conducted business. He ordered grapes on a regular basis and I shipped...