By Jennifer LaRue
By now, almost everyone knows about Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette being cancelled. The decision to cancel the show is the result of a video from 2023, shared by TMZ, showing Ms. Paul in an altercation with her ex-partner, Dakota Mortensen.[1] Ms. Paul was arrested because of that altercation and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault.[2]
With the decision to cancel the show, it’s not just disappointed fans the network will have to deal with. ABC is paid by brands to appear on The Bachelorette.[3] But if the show never airs, ABC may never see that money.
All contracts are based on assumptions.[4] Sometimes those assumptions are explicit, but sometimes they’re taken for granted.[5] For instance, in Krell. v. Henry, the court inferred that the “foundation of the contract” was the viewing of the procession, even though the written agreement was a simple room rental.[6] The court decided that the procession’s occurrence was a basic assumption.[7] Turning to The Bachelorette, the point in the network casting Ms. Paul was to go after the “ratings miracle” that she brought to Hulu on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.[8] For brands, it would make sense that they were spending money on ad space for this season of The Bachelorette to receive the massive exposure expected.
Assuming performance was specific to the show, the network could avoid a breach of contract claim with a force majeure clause.[9] A force majeure clause “enumerates a list of supervening circumstances that the parties agree will excuse performance.”[10] Perhaps the network included a clause stating that performance is excused if the show never airs. For a specified circumstance to be excused as a force majeure event, the event must prevent the performance.[11] So, if performance is ad space on The Bachelorette, then canceling the show would prevent performance.
If performance is prevented, cancelling the show must be “wholly outside of the impacted party’s influence or control, unless otherwise provided in the contract.”[12] If cancelling The Bachelorette could have been avoided, the network may not be excused under the force majeure clause.[13] To avoid cancelling the show, maybe ABC should have picked another bachelorette, considering they knew that Ms. Paul had been charged in a domestic violence incident that led to the injury of her child.[14] Ultimately, claiming performance is prevented would likely fail, since the choice to cancel was within the network’s control.[15] In fact, they admit it.[16]
Another way the network could try to escape liability in the face of a potential lawsuit is under the doctrine of impracticability.[17] If the “foundation of the contract” is ads on the show, the network could argue that there’s no breach of contract because playing ads is impracticable considering the season was cancelled to avoid burdening the network’s reputation, the non-occurrence of which was a basic assumption on which the contract was made.[18] But if the parties were specific enough to reference performance as ads on The Bachelorette, it seems the parties would’ve discussed the possibility that the show faces issues or gets cancelled, so there wouldn’t be an “unforeseen contingency not reasonably within the contemplation of the parties.”[19] Especially since the network was aware of Ms. Paul’s arrest and the contents of the video, it seems unlikely these concerns wouldn’t have been raised.
In Transatlantic Financing Corp. v. United States, impracticability was raised, but it was found that the parties didn’t specify a route, so the expected performance was the “usual and customary” route, which was completed.[20] Here, if the contract was general, then, similar to Transatlantic, impracticability would be unnecessary, since the expected performance could be the usual agreement that the brands receive ads on the network.[21] Therefore, performance could still occur if it’s not “vitally different.”[22] With the understanding that The Bachelorette was supposed to be a “ratings miracle,” it’s hard to say a massive audience wasn’t expected, meaning performance on another show could be “vitally different.”[23]
The decision to cancel The Bachelorette is criticized by some and praised by others.[24] Now that the decision has been made, we’ll have to wait and see what legal implications will come. While this year, Sundays will not be filled with Jesse Palmer, hopefully, The Bachelor franchise can pull through and deliver next year for its Bachelor Nation.
[1] Rebecca Cohen & Pilar Melendez, Taylor Frankie Paul Seen Attacking Ex-Boyfriend with a Chair in a Newly Released Video, NBC News (Mar. 20, 2026), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/taylor-frankie-paul-seen-attacking-ex-boyfriend-chair-newly-released-v-rcna264351.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] See Vernon Valentine Palmer, Excused Performances: Force Majeure, Impracticability, and Frustration of Contracts, 70 The Am. J. of Compar. L. i70, i70 (2022), https://academic.oup.com/ajcl/article/70/Supplement_1/i70/6696364.
[5] See id. at i71.
[6] Shivprasad Swaminathan, Frustration: Navigating the Bramble Bush, 43 Liverpool L. Rev. 501, 511 (2022), https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10991-022-09294-7.
[7] Id.
[8] Mary McNamara, ABC Thought Taylor Frankie Paul Would Amp “Bachelorette” Ratings. It Was Playing with Fire, L.A. Times (Mar. 21, 2026), https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2026-03-21/bachelorette-canceled-taylor-frankie-paul-should-have-known-better.
[9] See Palmer, supra note 4.
[10] Id. at i72.
[11] Stephanie Cash, et. al., Three Key Defenses to Contractual Performance: Force Majeure, Commercial Impracticability, and Frustration of Purpose, JDSupra (Sept. 15, 2022), https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/three-key-defenses-to-contractual-7720089/.
[12] Id.
[13] See id.
[14] See McNamara, supra note 8.
[15] See Radhamely De Leon, ‘The Bachelorette’ Cancelation Could Cost ABC Tens of Millions of Dollars: Sources, DECIDER (Mar. 20, 2026), https://decider.com/2026/03/20/the-bachelorette-cancelation-cost-abc/.
[16] See id. (“‘In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,’ a Disney Entertainment Television spokesperson said in a statement to DECIDER.”)
[17] See Paul Holtzmuller, Contracts – Impossibility – Inaccessibility of Usual and Customary Route – Transatlantic Financing Corp. v. United States, 363 F.2d 312 (D.C. Cir. 1966), 8 Wm & Mary L. Rev. 679, 679 (1967), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol8/iss4/9.
[18] U.C.C. § 2-615; Swaminathan, supra note 6.
[19] Holtzmuller, supra note 17 at 681.
[20] Id. at 679.
[21] See id.
[22] Id. at 682.
[23] Id.; see McNamara, supra note 8.
[24] See McNamara, supra note 8.