DU Attorneys, I'm having a Contract Brain F@rt ...

[1StrongBlackMan]

Can anyone recall from your first year Contracts course, the concept of what happens when parties to a contract continue to perform after the contract term has expired? For example, an employment contract expires; but the employee continues to come to work and perform their job and the employer continues to direct the employee's work and pay the employee.

I seem to recall, the contract is considered in effect, under the same terms as the expired contract.

I'm looking for Arizona (or 9th Circuit or SC) case law to that effect; but I can't recall the terms to search. Thanks.

[rug]

1. Generally, the terms continue. Generally.

In the absence of a contract, the person can always proceed under the theory of detrimental reliance and unjust enrichment.

In this case, the state labor statutes may kick in instead.

[Evergreen Emerald]

2. Implied contract?

There are a couple of Arizona cases regarding implied contracts

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. An expand brain fart is preferred.

It could be implied, and the apparent agreement by both sides acts to bind them both, unless the statute of frauds is involved.

[geek tragedy]

3. i would say implied contract, and the GENERAL rule

is that the original terms would govern, but law is nothing without specifics

[Chan790]

5. I'm not a lawyer...

but the town I live in just found themselves in a situation like that with a contract town employee and the town's lawyer advised them that they pretty much had to get rid of him or else it was going to become a litigation headache down the road. (That may have specifically had to do with the type of work he was doing however as he was in-part a regulatory officer of the town which meant any decisions or enforcements he made sans contract may have been challenged as invalid.)

His contract had expired nearly a year ago, specified that any renewal or extension had to be in writing signed by both parties--which had not occurred--and he'd continued to collect a paycheck and turn in timesheets the entire time his contract was expired. He was not entirely within the terms of his contract (it stipulated that he had to do a minimum of 6 hours/week and he wasn't even consistently doing 24 hours/month.) but that was not discovered until after the conversation with the town attorney. (For his part, he wasn't lying on the timesheets...nobody was checking that he was fulfilling the contract terms or else they'd have noticed his contract was expired.)

That's CT though--not AZ, 9^th Circuit, or SC case law.