(image property of Saigon Times USA)
Today, the Supreme Court of Korea awarded a construction company 3 billion won ($2.4 million) of a dead woman's money.
The construction company sued actress Choi Jin-sil, who committed suicide last October. The company hired Choi as a model in March 2004. Their contract stated that she would have to pay back 500 million won ($399,000), if she "depreciated the company's social reputation."
In the court's opinion, "The purpose of the brand model contract is to use the model's social reputation and images to draw the customers' interest . . . The model's failure to maintain an adequate image constitutes a breach of the hiring contract. . . . The concept of the apartment which Choi was supposed to advertise was dignity and happiness, and Choi, as its model, was under the obligation to act accordingly." (emphasis is mine)
Either contract law here differs fundamentally from what we study in the U.S., or the Supreme Court justices just spent too much time in Contracts class cruising Facebook while the prof droned on about defenses and excuses.
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Hi Tony,
ReplyDeleteI was reading your daoofbludbook website and I thought it was horrible that a construction company would sue a (now deceased) model for being abused. But I realized that there may be a hidden motive.
Obviously the model did not choose to be abused, so it was not her fault that her face was bruised. The real villain was her husband, who did that to her. Let's say that the company may have lost something with her face being unable to be used for new model shots. I realized that ..... possibly..... they sued the estate of the dead model to get the money from her husband, who may have inherited her wealth.
Knowing that they cannot sue him for breaking her contract, if he was to be the beneficiary of her estate, they may have sued her estate to punish him. If this went to a jury, even the jury could see awarding the construction company as a way to punish the husband.
The law, in the hands of human beings, can look for alternate solutions to problems. I think that the jury used their power to punish her husband. This is a question of what is correct in the eyes of the law vs. what is correct in the eyes of mankind. The eyes of mankind know that the husband should pay for what he did, and mankind found a way to make that happen.
What do you think of my theory?