Enforcing contracts to submit to religious authority

[Judith Baer]

Eugene wrote:
Consider the following:  Say that an actor agrees to star in a movie two
years hence.  He then undergoes a religious conversion, and concludes that
participating in the movie would be against God's will, perhaps because the
movie involves too much sex, nudity, alcohol, irreligion, blasphemy, or what
have you.  I take it we indeed wouldn't order specific performance of the
contract (which in any event would likely yield lousy acting).  But I assume
that there the movie company would indeed get damages.
 
Hmmmm....This hypo made me think of Helen Hayes's "act of God" baby. HH had
signed on for a play, got pregnant, and was sued by the producers to enforce
the contract. The judge ruled that the pregnncy was an "AOG" and thus the
equivalen of a natural disaster. This would have been circa 1930. Would a
religious conversion also be an "AOG?" 
 
Judy Baer
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20081120/1349ef79/attachment.htm