Q24

[AyakiK696]

Is because wrong because of the phrase "costs the court less to enforce than monetary damages"?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes (B) is wrong for that reason.

(A) the opposite of what the author is saying. These are specifically the types of cases in which the author thinks the court would be wiser to AVOID specific performance.

(D) the author never talked through this hypothetical of "refused to do the work AND refused to pay monetary damages".

(E) is closer to the opposite of what's being said in the passage. Specific performance is most likely to be detrimental (less likely to be considered by courts, hopefully) in cases where someone refuses to perform a service, ESPECIALLY detrimental if a a contract as been broken through refusal to undertake employment.

The correct answer (D), is supported by 39-48, which suggest that enforcing these broken contracts would be very difficult for the courts to do (line 46-48 imply that the courts do not have the resources necessary to do such a thing).

[AyakiK696]

I'm surprised that you were able to decode my post! Haha thank you!

[MayaM405]

I initially eliminated C because of the word "successful," which I didn't see supported. I drew support for the rest of the answer from lines 42-50. We are never given any information on whether or not this would be deemed successful - why can't specific performance be successful even with imposing uncomfortable conditions?

Can you explain how we can make that connection?

I struggled with this on my first pass and am still having a hard time determining that "specific performance is less than fully successful" in answer choice C is more supported by the text than inferring that specific performance "costs the court less" in answer choice B, as resources are directly discussed in the paragraph. Is it simply because of the strength of each answer choice?

Hope that makes sense, thank you!!

[ohthatpatrick]

So, first when we read the question stem, we're supposed to answer in our own words or find the answer in the passage.

The big picture of the passage was
TOPIC: specific performance
AUTHOR'S PURPOSE: to discuss SP and indicate times when it's preferred and times when it's avoided

The times when it's preferred was the 2nd paragraph, and that was when the broken part of the contract was "I failed to give you the special thing you were supposed to get from me". Since these "special things" don't have a strict monetary value, specific performance (I am forced to give you the special thing I promised) is preferred.

The times when it's not preferred was the 3rd paragraph, and that was when the broken part of the contract was "I failed to perform the service I was supposed to perform for you".
Since you probably wouldn't get great service from me if the court FORCED me to perform the service, this is when specific performance is avoided.

So if you understood the passage's big points, then when you read this question stem you probably have a first thought of, "Well .. the author would say let's NOT use specific performance in those cases".

If not, then we'd have to go find a line reference. The supporting lines start around line 31, but the keywords appear in 37-38. Even just looking at the following sentence we can see that the author is listing "the most compelling reasons AGAINST enforcement of contracts ...".

The author lists potential problems such as:
- there would be heightened dissatisfaction and psychological friction
- a court might not have resources to enforce this
- a court would do better to avoid uncomfortable conditions
- a court could get entangled in troublesome aspects of the disputed relationship

When you read (C), it's an incredibly weakly worded statement.
Either the author believes that enforcing specific performance would almost always be fully successful,
or the author believes that enforcing specific performance would often be less than full successful.

After reading the 3rd paragraph, would you think that this author would say, "The vast majority of the time, enforcing specific performance in these cases would be fully successful?"

Of course not. So then we can support the idea that she would say "it would often be less than fully successful".

Basically, if you think a certain strategy has troublesome aspects and compelling reasons against, then you probably don't find that strategy to be fully successful.

Hope this helps.