COURT WATCH

Bring back the days when the reported decisions were filled with cases concerning disputes over the quality of the franchise system and whether the parties had complied with their respective obligations to make the franchise relationship work. A seagull's view of the recent decisions involving franchise relationships suggests that even though most of the text of a franchise agreement is devoted to describing the parties' rights and obligations relating to the granting, construction, and operation of the franchise, when the franchise relationship becomes fractured, the field of battle more often than not moves not to the substantive relationship of the parties, but to what might be termed the legalese portions of the franchise agreement and procedural matters ' arbitration, jurisdiction, statutes of limitations, whether preliminary injunctions should be granted, choice of forum, and choice of state law ' to name only a few of these non-substantive issues. The meat of the franchise relationship becomes secondary. The cynic in our audience might say that the sideshows at the circus have moved to center ring.