932000One possibility was for the party owing the duty and the party to whom the duty was owed to be considered as one. The question was then of the degree of care that such a person ought reasonably to have exercised in the given situation. This interpretation might in particular be sufficient to determine the level of effort required from an agent.
932000On the other hand, however, it may not be possible to consider the two parties as one, since the party undertaking the duty has been chosen by virtue of his special abilities, for example a barrister or an architect. In such cases, 'best efforts' are to be interpreted by reference to the reasonable care and level of competence which one would normally expect from a professional in that field.
932000Various difficulties arise when the two parties have opposing interests. Thus, a publisher who undertakes to use his best efforts to promote a work whose prospects of success are slim, the author being paid by a commission on sales, would fall into this category. If we look to the reasonable behaviour of a professional in a given field, we must accept that a publisher should be able to stop promoting a book, placing his own interests first (this is an example of the Zilg reasoning mentioned above) where the initial promotional activity had failed. Another possibility in this case would be to return to the first interpretation and to consider the parties as one in order to take as the object of the "best efforts" the volume of sales which would maximise the combined profit of the partners.