DISCLAIMER: The following unofficial case summaries are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
163230P.pdf 01/05/2018 Mark Boswell v. Panera Bread Company
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 16-3230
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis
[PUBLISHED] [Arnold, Author, with Loken and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Contracts. Defendant's bonus plan for its at-will store
managers was a unilateral contract; certain undertakings by the managers,
such as agreement to maintain confidentiality, did not convert the
contract to a bilateral contract; a party may not revoke an offer to make
a unilateral contract after the offeree has begun to perform it because
the offeree, at that point, has supplied consideration to make the
contract enforceable against the offeror to the extent it has been
performed; here, the managers had begun performance, and defendant could
not unilateraly modify the contract by imposing a cap on the bonuses;
argument that defendant reserved the power to modify or terminate the
bonus offer before the managers began performing rejected; no error in
rejecting defendant's novation, waiver, estoppel and commercial
frustration defenses. Judge Loken, concurring.