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23 Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports L. J. 109 (2016)
Dancing around Contracts and Business Ethics: Lessons from Arthur Murray

handle is hein.journals/vse23 and id is 123 raw text is: DANCING AROUND CONTRACTS AND BUSINESS ETHICS: LESSONS FROM ARTHUR MURRAY DANIEL M. WARNER* Arthur Murray was the early and mid-twentieth century dance instruc- tor whose franchised mail-order dance courses, dance studios, and early TV show made him rich and famous. Arthur Murray's unethical business prac- tices spawned a great deal of litigation. Many cases involve rich, elderly widows who get taken in by smooth-talking dance instructors and end up contracting for many tens of thousands of dollars of dance lessons. A 2010 article discussed how these plaintiffs are allowed to get out of their contracts. Of interest here is how they got into them. The sale of dancing lessons presents unique means and opportunities for the seller-with the right moti- vation-to play on the vulnerable buyer's emotional needs by exercising un- due influence. An analysis of the unethical business practices here suggest how similar processes are at work throughout American consumer culture. I. INTRODUCTION Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.' In the early and mid-20th century, Arthur Murray, the appar- ently benign dance instructor, chain dance-studio entrepreneur, * Professor, Department of Accounting, College of Business and Economics, Western Washington University; J.D. University of Washington. A former public defender and veteran, Professor Warner teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the American legal system, government regulation of business, ad- vanced commercial transactions, and business ethics. Professor Warner is the au- thor of a college textbook on the legal environment of business, co-author of a business law textbook, and a staff reviewer for the American Business LawJournal. He has published extensively exploring the intersection of popular culture and the law, for which publications he has six times received the College of Business Dean's Research Award for distinguished contributions in published research. He served eight years on the Whatcom County Council, two years as its Chair. He has served on the Faculty Senate, on various university and college committees including chairman of the University Master Plan Committee; he has been active in state Bar Association committee work and in local and neighborhood politics, where he has served on numerous boards and commissions over 40 years and where he was proud to received ReSources Environmental Hero of the Year for 2010. He is currently the president of his local water association. 1. See Quote Investigator, Behind Every Great Fortune There Is a Crime, QUOTE INVESTIGATOR (Sept. 9, 2013), http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/for- tune-crime/ (quoting Honor6 de Balzac). Balzac's actual writing, translated from French, in a serialization of Le Pre Goriot published in Revue de Paris in 1834 read: The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed. (109)

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