Chodos v. West Publishing Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
292 F.3d 992 (9th Cir. 2002)
Attorney Chodos (plaintiff) spent over 3,600 hours across three years writing a legal treatise under a standard Author Agreement, which West Publishing (defendant, having acquired the original publisher) rejected for marketing and economic reasons while explicitly admitting the manuscript was high-quality with no shortcomings in Chodos's work; Chodos sued, ultimately seeking quantum meruit restitution rather than breach-of-contract damages, and the district court found West's rejection decision was within its contractual discretion, granting West summary judgment. Chodos appealed.
Whether a publisher breaches an author agreement by exercising its contractual discretion to reject a manuscript for reasons unrelated to the manuscript's literary quality, and if so, whether an author who has fully performed under the contract may still recover in quantum meruit rather than being limited to breach-of-contract damages.