Maybe my imagination isn’t that imaginative….

At the wonderful contracts conference this past weekend at Thomas Jefferson (yes, thanks again, Eniola), I learned that, when they excavated to build the school’s fabulous new building, remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered.  Coincidentally, just this fall, my final exam concerned a contract for the sale of real property.  After contract but before closing, the seller had sprinkler repairs done on the lawn and the repair company discovered the skeleton of a dinosaur.  Neither buyer or seller was aware of the skeletal remains at the time of contract.  Seller wants to rescind.  Mutual mistake?

This semester we walked through a hypo about a lease that allows the tenants to keep one “household pet.” “Household pet” is nowhere defined in the lease.  Tenant obtains a kangaroo to keep as a pet. Our task was to discuss how a court would go about figuring out whether a kangaroo is a “household pet.”  I thought this imaginative until today, when this story came to my attention.  It doesn’t answer the question whether a kangaroo is a “household pet,” but it does suggest that maybe my imagination isn’t that imaginative.

[Meredith R. Miller]