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Court Watch

By Michael W. Tyler
July 27, 2012

While the existence of a “community of interest” is well-established as a fundamental definitional criteria of a franchise or dealership relationship, two recent cases illustrate that the resolution of the threshold issue of whether a sufficient “community of interest” exists in a given context remains somewhat unpredictable. Indeed, these cases reiterate the lack of a uniform test or set of factors universally applied by the courts in addressing this issue. On the contrary, these two cases show that even when courts purport to apply the law of the same state, they often apply divergent interpretations that lead to contrary results.

Missouri Beverage Co., Inc. v. Shelton Brothers, Inc.

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