As reported by Fox10, a huge event, scheduled for 4/20 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in downtown Phoenix, was cancelled the night before it was to open, despite thousands of tickets already have been sold. It happened to be a gathering of medical marijuana patients. The political dispute over medical marijuana in Arizona was not the point. It was over payment deadlines set out in the contract between the hotel and the festival organizers.
You can read more details, and the positions of both parties in the dispute, the concessions, the complaints, and the stories in the original article. The outcome was a disaster and financial loss for both parties: an empty hotel, and thousands showing up for a party that never happened. They signed the contract with optimistic expectations for success (one imagines). Something went wrong. Courts will likely decide who failed to live up to the contract.
What is a contract for? That’s an answer that won’t fit into a blog post. But one simple way of stating it is: when two parties undertake to do something, a contract says what happens when things go right, and what happens if things go wrong. The ways in which things can go wrong, are numerous. A contract says let’s decide now, and not in the heat of the moment, what we agree to do if things go wrong.
Many businesspeople sign a contract, but then don’t act on it as a contract. A lawyer who is experienced in these matters will save you millions, and untold hours of stress. Learn from the experiences of others.