
Reliance Cooperage Corp. v. Treat: Remedies for Breach by the Seller
Yale law professor Ian Ayres continues his American Contract Law course with a case study on remedies for seller breach. The lecture examines Reliance Cooperage Corp. v. Treat, a dispute over a contract for bourbon barrel staves, walking through how courts calculate damages when a seller fails to deliver goods as promised. Ayres uses the case to illustrate the doctrinal mechanics of expectation damages and cover remedies available to buyers, part of a longer sequence of case lectures built for his Coursera courses. The talk is short and focused, aimed at students following the course's module on breach and remedies rather than a general audience, but it stands on its own as a self-contained explanation of one case and the legal principle it demonstrates.