Let's talk about John Wick. The latest John Wick film - John Wick 4 – is breaking records at the box office. The entertainment news headlines are heavy with 'kills' 'slays' 'blows up' 'destroys' 'annihilates' the box office. Apt.

In the real world, it’s also the story of a small film company beating the big five studios - again.

John Wick’s world, however, is most definitely not ours. They look alike but that’s about it.

John Wick's world is one of professional killers, organized crime, and those who make a living providing services and goods to them. It’s a world ignored by the ‘authorities," and residents are not subject to arrest, imprisonment, or even censure.

John Wick and Business Law

The Rules of John Wick’s World

The law does not apply to them... but rules do. Their world is, in fact, defined by rules. The rules exist because, as countless characters have explained, "without them we live with the animals."

The rules: no business may be conducted in the Continental; markers must be honored regardless of circumstance, potential disaster, or consequence; no member of the High Table may be harmed; gold is the only currency; there is to be no collateral damage - no harm to 'real’ people; there is no getting out.

The rules are absolute with corresponding black and white interpretations. There are no gray areas. There are no excuses, no rationales, no force majeure, no alibis, no "but if you read that this way ..." arguments.

You are either in obeyance or in default.

That's it.

Black and White Penalties

The penalties are clear and simple. Break some rules and the immediate consequence is death. Break others and get "seven days to get your affairs in order," after which retribution is a radical reduction of staff, some prosaic form of harm, and a loss of position.

There are no judges – the rules are black and white, there’s no need. There are adjudicators who mete out punishment. They have no interest in the facts of an ‘incident’ -  after all, in a black-and-white world the facts speak for themselves. Punishment is swift.

There are no appeals.

John Wick’s world is the world many [all?] of the people working through a family law matter think they want to live in. Black and white, immediate consequences, no arguments, no lingering disputes . . . perfect, right?

Well, no. 

One of the [many] glaring problems with the John Wick rules is this: there is no room for interpretation when two absolute rules conflict. Take the 'you must honor your marker' rule. Not doing so means [eventual] death - even when the request means breaking another absolute rule that, as we saw in John Wick 2, could take down the entire enterprise. Why? Because in a black-and-white world there is no place to go, no one to explain the horrific consequences of obeying.  

Because there are only absolutes, there are no guard rails that could mitigate disaster. The only thing to do is wait for all the dominoes to fall then clean up the mess and start over.

In the Hopkins Centrich world, we're more than happy that we can - and do - design contracts to do what they're supposed to do while accounting for the unexpected. And we build in the framework for handling potential breaches in ways that do not require a single resident of the Continental to intervene.