Quote Originally Posted by gahspidy
Probably when a few were sued for everything they have including future profits and their first born because some wimpering Bride claimed that her life was ruined because her wedding day photos did not live up to her dreams and/or the photographer was in a fiery car crash on his way home and lost all the files as well as his equipment and after spending several weeks in the hospital came to realize he lost everything else in a law suit.

In this day and age a contract such as this is not unreasonable.
"Professional standards and reasonable safeguarding," would go a long way in a contract. Since any dispute would likely end up in small claims court where judges assume neither party is legally savvy, a contract which clearly gives one party, a professional, many, many rights, and absolutely no responsibilities, while the non-professional had to pay regardless of acts of God, would likely count for nothing.

My brother is a lawyer. He's told me more than once that two parties can put anything they want in a contract, but it doesn't make the contract enforceable, and the more bizarre and lopsided the contract, the less likely it is to be enforced. (And he said, 'throwing in the kitchen sink' isn't an error only laypeople make; some of the least enforceable contracts he's ever seen have been written by lawyers- probably trying to impress a client and hoping, like 99.9% of all contracts, it never ends up in court).

Look at it this way- nothing will keep you out of court if you have an unreasonable client. "I swear, your honor, I didn't look that fat on my wedding day. He must have done something wrong with his camera." (And that's just the groom's complaint). What you want is a ruling in your favor. Let the judge decide whether the fiery car crash could have reasonably been foreseen by the photographer. (There are nut case judges, too, but my guess is 99 out of 100 would say it couldn't have).