P2P

21 I L T A N E T . O R G guided by the world-wide events occurring in the wake of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, including the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a "pandemic" on March 11, 2020, and government actions instituted as a response such as forced quarantines, business closures, and travel restrictions. We included the general reference to an "act of God" as that is a common expression in force majeure clauses and could be the basis of a claim where more specific language does not exist. Seventy-five percent of the force majeure clauses reviewed contained a reference to the "act of God" concept. On the other hand, reference to government action appeared in 57% of the clauses, and pandemic-specific language appeared in 18% of the clauses. One note is that, while compiling the results, we took a conservative approach on whether the force majeure clauses covered these categories, with an aim of removing as much subjectivity from our review as possible. 1 Depending on the circumstances, legal counsel may wish to identify other relevant language. We found relatively consistent results across both industry and agreement types: 1. For example, when determining whether to flag a positive response to "government action," we included phrases related to "intervention by a government entity" and "any action of civil or military authority," but did not include references to "national emergency", "government restriction", "civil commotion", or "national or international calamity".

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