Today in History: DC Gets the UCC

On this date, December 30, 1963, the Uniform Commercial Code goes into effect in the District of Columbia.

It wasn’t in effect a year and a half earlier, on April 17, 1962, when Ora Lee Williams, a mother on relief, bought a $514.95 stereo (about $3,000 today) from the Walker-Thomas Furniture Co. of Washington, D.C. (left).  But Circuit Judge J. Skelly Wright (right) applied it anyway to find that the plaintiff stated a claim for unconsionability in the casebook staple, Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture Co., 350 F.2d 445 (D.C. Cir. 1965).  (Photos: AALSContracts.com).

[Frank Snyder]