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b. Commercially Reasonable Cover For cover to be commercially reasonable, the cover transaction’s terms need not be identical to those of the breached contract; they need only be reasonable. Indeed, the substitute goods themselves need not be identical to those contemplated under the breached contract, but only commercially useful as reasonable substitutes in the circumstances. Even so, some authority holds that the substitute goods must be like-kind substitutes for the original contract goods. That is, some courts may deem the substitute goods unreasonable if the nature or quality of the substitute goods is materially superior to those of the original contract goods. In any case, cover may be appropriate even though, in hindsight, the method of cover was not the most effective or the cheapest. Indeed, the formula for cover damages presumes that the buyer will pay more for the substitute goods than she would have for the original goods. [U.C.C. § 2-712, cmt. 2 (1951); Martella v. Woods , 715 F.2d 410 (8th Cir. 1983); Eldesouky v. Aziz , No. 11–CV–6986 (JLC), 2015 WL 1573319 (S.D.N.Y. 2015).] Examples : (1) A church contracted with a distributor to purchase wood trusses for a construction project. The distributor timely delivered the trusses for a while, but eventually fell behind. As to about 200 trusses, the distributor was late on delivery by seven weeks. During that time, the church contacted the distributor repeatedly. Finally, seeing the construction project had become bottlenecked, the church obtained substitute trusses from another seller on the open market. These trusses were slightly different from those to be obtained from the distributor, and the church’s cost to obtain the substitute trusses was about $17,000 more than the contract price. On similar facts, an appellate court upheld the trial court’s finding that cover was proper here. The church promptly obtained suitable goods on the open market. Presumably, the cost was the best price reasonably obtainable considering the distributor’s delay and how far behind the project was. [ See Universal Builders Corp. v. United Methodist Convalescent Homes of Ct., Inc. , 508 A.2d 819 (Ct. App. Ct. 1986).] (2) A farmer contracted to sell sunflower seeds to a distributor at $0.11 per pound. Soon after, the market price for sunflowers skyrocketed. The farmer refused to deliver any sunflower seeds to the distributor and, instead, sold the seeds to the distributor’s competitors for $0.22 per pound. The distributor shopped around for substitute seeds from a different source. The distributor could purchase some seeds for $0.24 per pound, but these seeds would require extra processing to meet the quality stipulated in the original contract. Thus, the distributor bought other seeds at $0.26 per pound. These more expensive seeds required no additional processing. On similar facts, a state supreme court
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