A Pithy Take on Hawkins v. McGee

–From Professor Ann H. Britton, Georgetown Law Center, Date of event: 1972.

I was proud of one of my classmates at Georgetown in 1972 (sorry, long forgot the name of the guilty party)when he briefed Hawkins v. McGee as: “A hand with a burn is worth two with a bush.”

McClurg note. For those who have not yet studied Hawkins v. McGee or have somehow forgotten it, Hawkins is the classic case from first-year Contracts in which the defendant doctor guaranteed plaintiff, a young man with a burned hand, “a hundred per cent perfect hand” if he would let the doctor perform surgery on him. Instead of a perfect hand, plaintiff ended up with one that grew thick hair because of a skin graft from his chest.

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