Hawkins v. McGee

George Hawkins had a scar on his hand from a childhood burn. Dr. McGee, a surgeon, solicited Hawkins to undergo a skin grafting operation, promising to give him a 'one hundred percent perfect hand.' The doctor grafted skin from Hawkins's chest onto his hand, but the operation resulted in a worse condition: the hand became covered with thick, matted hair from the chest skin graft. Hawkins sued for breach of contract based on the doctor's guarantee of a perfect result.

The court distinguished between the expectation interest in contract and the reliance or restitution interests. In contract, the goal is to put the plaintiff in the position he would have been in had the contract been performed as promised. The value of a perfect hand minus the value of the hand in its post-operative condition represents the true expectation damages. The court rejected including damages for the worsening of the hand from its pre-operative state as the primary measure, because that would conflate contract and tort damages. However, the court acknowledged that additional pain and suffering beyond what would accompany even a successful operation could be included as consequential damages, since such suffering was not within the contemplation of the parties as part of a successful performance.

Hawkins v. McGee became the standard teaching case for expectation damages and is included in virtually every first-year Contracts casebook. The case established the clear conceptual framework for distinguishing the three measures of contract damages: expectation (benefit of the bargain), reliance (out-of-pocket costs), and restitution (unjust enrichment). It also influenced the development of medical malpractice contract claims and the enforceability of surgical guarantees.