Crazy Contract Clauses

M&M by madame.furie from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

M&M by madame.furie from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

I love contracts. I know this makes me a big legal dork, but I love writing them and reviewing them.

A contract is the documentation of how a relationship is going to work and as long as the provisions aren’t illegal, you can put in whatever you want. There’s a lot of room for creativity, and I wish more people would take advantage of it. I was tickled pink earlier this year when I got to use the phrase “sexy bitch” in a contract. Granted, this was a contract between another legal blogger and me, so we had more license to have fun with it once we got the essential verbiage down.

I worked with a woman earlier this year who was writing the terms of service for her website. She was overwhelmed and confused when she read other sites’ terms but relaxed when I explained what all the legalese meant and that she could write terms that were simple and in layman’s terms, similar to what Reddit does. A few months ago I walk talking with a business owner who was frustrated when his co-owner cancelled their meetings. Since they were both fans of craft beer, I suggested they put a provision in their operating agreement that the penalty for cancelling a meeting for a non-emergency would be a growler of beer.

I did some digging and here are some of my favorite crazy provisions I’ve heard about in other contracts.

  1. Michael Jordan’s contract with the Chicago Bulls said he could play basketball anytime anywhere. He could play in exhibitions, pick-up games, etc. Apparently, he is the only player general manager Jerry Krause gave this provision to. I suspect other professional athletes have a lot of limits put on their activities to prevent injuries.
  2. The Houston Astros promised pitcher Roy Oswalt a bulldozer if they won the 2005 National League Series. The Astros won and the team gave Oswalt a Caterpillar D6N XL as promised.
  3. Van Halen’s rider required concert venues to provide the band with a bowl of M&Ms but no brown ones. This provision was quite ingenious. Van Halen’s show was a huge production that used 850 par lamp lights and at the time most venues weren’t used to them. If the band arrived and there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, it showed that the venue may not have read the contract carefully enough and they would do an additional check to make sure everything for the show was put up properly.

I love drafting custom contracts and I encourage people to ask for what they really want and make them their own. If you want to chat with me about this or any other topic, you can connect with me on TwitterGoogle+FacebookYouTubeLinkedIn, or you can email me.
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When’s the Last Time You Reviewed Your Contract Templates?

Inspiration as Commodity by exquisitur from Flickr

Inspiration as Commodity by exquisitur from Flickr

I had the pleasure of speaking to the Photographer’s Adventure Club last week. In addition to discussion the basics of copyright and how to protect their rights in their work, we talked a lot about the importance of contracts.

I know the subject of contracts makes a lot of people’s eyes glaze over – it’s that fine-print-legalese-crap-that-no-one-reads-anyway stuff. A lot of people think contracts are boring and a lot of contracts are . . . but they don’t have to be.

I love contracts. They create the basis of so many relationships – whether they are written, oral, or pieced together through a series of emails. Too often people come to me with a question about a problem in one of their professional relationships and when I ask, “What does your contract say about this?” the answer is “I don’t know” or “We don’t have a contract.” We can still resolve the problem but we could have avoided a lot of headaches and frustration by putting everything on paper in advance so everyone’s on the same page from the beginning.

Having contract templates is often the best way to create the relationship with others that you want. In regards to photographers they should have a file of contract templates for clients who hire them, for other photographers when they have to hire an additional person to work a shoot, a copyright license for publications, a model release, and a location release. And contracts don’t have to be long, complicated, or riddled with crazy legalese to be effective. I prefer to write contracts in straight-forward English and I wish more of my legal counterparts would get on board with this idea.

And contracts can be fun. Recently I saw an episode of Man v. Food where Adam Richman took on the Hellfire Challenge at Smoke Eaters – 12 wings covered in crazy hot sauce. Before he could begin the challenge he had to sign a waiver that required the person signing to acknowledge that “I am an idiot.”

You can put almost anything you want in your contract as long as it isn’t illegal. And if you downloaded your contract templates off the internet, that’s not a bad place to look for ideas, but you should at least consult an attorney to make sure it suits your needs before you start using it. If the contract is valid and you sign it, you’re stuck with the terms so you want to make sure you’re not opening yourself up to get screwed over.

If you need additional information about the minimum you need for a valid contract, please check out my video below or here.


If you want to chat about your contract needs, please send me an email or contact a business attorney in your community.

You can also connect with me on TwitterGoogle+FacebookYouTube, and LinkedIn.
Please subscribe to the Carter Law Firm newsletter for additional information about running your business more effectively. Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.