ABSTRACT Most Contracts casebooks feature either Baird v. Gimbel or Drennan v. Star Paving to illustrate the limits on revocability of an offer. In this article an analysis of the case law yields three major conclusions. First, as is generally known, in the contractor–subcontractor cases Drennan has prevailed. However, both it and its spawn, Restatement 2d 87(2), have had almost no impac…
Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that “The duty to keep a contract at common law means a prediction that you must pay damages if you do not keep it, and nothing else. . . . If you commit a contract, you are liable to pay a compensatory sum unless the promised event comes to pass” (1897, 462). That aphorism has to be qualifi ed by recognizing that in the face of changed circumstances, the perf…