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Though the COVID-19 pandemic might be unprecedented in many respects, the law often has been called upon to address the effect on contracts of calamities of all stripes. At the height of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 that triggered the deaths of some 675,000 Americans and 50 to 100 million people worldwide, health departments closed schools for a time, and later, there was a wave of contract disputes where teachers and school bus drivers sued the school districts for their wages. The school districts argued that they were excused from paying due to impossibility. The courts' holdings were scarcely a model of consistency: some courts held that the school district was obliged to honor their employees' contracts; others held it was not. In some instances, the results seemed to have been result-oriented to further a policy that the community is better able to sustain such risk than the employee. A century later, the law has a more sophisticated take on force majeure and related issues, and COVID-19 is unlikely to rattle the sturdy foundations of contract law.