There's an interesting news story in today's Wall Street Journal that would
make a great discussion for a class on either contract formation, mutual
mistake or cyberlaw.

Apparently there was a bug in one of United Airline's reservation computers
for about an hour that caused absurdly low prices to be quoted on some
flights to Asia.  One hundred and forty-three people purchased tickets on
the strength of that quote and were surprised when their credit cards were
charged for the real fare (about 20x what they thought they'd paid).  Now
United says that it won't honor the lower fares but will waive the
cancellation fee.

Sometimes the news is just made for us.

Ken Schneyer

WSJ subscribers can see the article at:

http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB982187689544528745.htm