The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics is a college athletics association for small colleges and universities in North America. For the 2018–2019 season, it has 251 member institutions, of which two are in British Columbia, one in the U. S. Virgin Islands, the rest in the conterminous United States; the NAIA, whose headquarters is in Kansas City, sponsors 26 national championships. The CBS Sports Network called CSTV, serves as the national media outlet for the NAIA. In 2014, ESPNU began carrying the NAIA Football National Championship. In 1937, Dr. James Naismith and local leaders staged the first National College Basketball Tournament at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City—one year before the first National Invitation Tournament and two years before the first NCAA Tournament; the goal of the tournament was to establish a forum for small colleges and universities to determine a national basketball champion. The original eight-team tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1938. On March 10, 1940, the National Association for Intercollegiate Basketball was formed in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1952, the NAIB was transformed into the NAIA, with that came the sponsorship of additional sports such as men's golf and outdoor track and field. Football in the NAIA was split based on enrollment; the 1948 NAIB national tournament was the first intercollegiate postseason to feature a black student-athlete, Clarence Walker of Indiana State under coach John Wooden. Wooden had withdrawn from the 1947 tournament; the association furthered its commitment to African-American athletes when, in 1953, it became the first collegiate association to invite black colleges and universities into its membership. In 1957, Tennessee A&I became the first black institution to win a collegiate basketball national championship. In 1959 Southern University became the first HBCU to win the NAIA Baseball championship; the NAIA began sponsoring intercollegiate championships for women in 1980, the second coed national athletics association to do so, offering collegiate athletics championships to women in basketball, cross country, gymnastics and outdoor track and field, softball and diving, tennis and volleyball.

The National Junior College Athletic Association had established a women's division in the spring of 1975 and held the first women's national championship volleyball tournament that fall. In 1997, Liz Heaston became the first female college athlete to play and score in a college football game when she kicked two extra points during the 1997 Linfield vs. Willamette football game. Launched in 2000 by the NAIA, the Champions of Character program promotes character and sportsmanship through athletics; the Champions of Character conducts clinics and has developed an online training course to educate athletes and athletic administrators with the skills necessary to promote character development in the context of sport. In 2010, the association opened the doors to the NAIA Eligibility Center, where prospective student-athletes are evaluated for academic and athletic eligibility, it delivers on the NAIA’s promise of integrity by leveling the playing field, guiding student-athlete success, ensuring fair competition.

Membership – The NAIA was the first association to admit colleges and universities from outside the United States. The NAIA began admitting Canadian members in 1967. Football – The NAIA was the first association to send a football team to Europe to play. In the summer of 1976, the NAIA sent Henderson State and Texas A&I to play 5 exhibition games in West Berlin, Nuremberg and Paris; the NAIA sponsors 14 sports. The NAIA recognizes three levels of competitions: "emerging", "invitational", "championship"; the association conducts, or has conducted in the past, championship tournaments in the following sports. Men's Basketball Division I Division II Women's Basketball Division I Division II The NAIA men's basketball championship is the longest-running collegiate National Championship of any sport in the United States; the tournament was the brainchild of creator of the game of basketball. The event began in 1937 with the inaugural tournament at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri; the 2017 men's championship marked the 80th edition of what has been tabbed College Basketball’s Toughest Tournament.

The tournament has awarded the Chuck Taylor Most Valuable Player award since 1939, as well as the Charles Stevenson Hustle Award, the basis for Pete Rose's nickname, given to him by Whitey Ford. Basketball is the only NAIA sport in which the organization's member institutions are aligned into divisions. Effective with the 2020–21 academic year, the NAIA will return to a single division for both men's and women's basketball. Gymnastics Men's Women's Ice Hockey Water Polo The NAIA has 21 member conferences, including 9 that sponsor football, the Association of Independent Institutions. Central States Football League Mid-States Football Association (MSF

The Douglas & Jarvis Patent Parabolic Truss Iron Bridge is a historic bridge across the Missisquoi River in Highgate, Vermont. Located at the end of Mill Hill Road, it is at 215 feet one of the longest bridges of its type in the northeastern United States, it was built in 1887, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The Douglas & Jarvis Patent Parabolic Truss Iron Bridge stands south of Highgate Falls village, at the end of Mill Hill Road, where it crossed the Missisquoi River to meet Highgate Road; the bridge is oriented east-west across the river, just downstream the dam at Highgate Falls, is open to pedestrian use. It is set on stone abutments, it is of a parabolic or lenticular truss design, with a secondary lenticular pony truss span at its southern end. The main trusses are supported by iron I-beam portal posts topped by decorative finials, are joined to each other by a web of overhead iron rods; the bridge was built in 1887 by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company of Berlin, which held rights to the Douglas and Jarvis patent for the lenticular truss design.

The bridge was one of the first to be built in the state with state-assisted local funding, is one of the largest surviving lenticular truss bridges in the northeastern United States. The company built many instances of this design in the late 19th century, but phased out its use in the early 20th century. Transport portal Engineering portal National Register of Historic Places listings in Franklin County, Vermont National Register of Historic Places listings in Vermont

Liquidated damages are damages whose amount the parties designate during the formation of a contract for the injured party to collect as compensation upon a specific breach. When damages are not predetermined/assessed in advance the amount recoverable is said to be'at large'. At common law, a liquidated damages clause will not be enforced if its purpose is to punish the party in breach rather than to compensate the injured party. One reason for this is that the enforcement of the term would, in effect, require an equitable order of specific performance. However, courts sitting in equity will seek to achieve a fair result and will not enforce a term that will lead to the unjust enrichment of the enforcing party. In order for a liquidated damages clause to be upheld, two conditions must be met. First, the amount of the damages identified must approximate the damages to fall upon the party seeking the benefit of the term. Second, the damages must be sufficiently uncertain at the time the contract is made that such a clause will save both parties the future difficulty of estimating damages.

Damages that are sufficiently uncertain may be referred to as unliquidated damages, may be so categorized because they are not mathematically calculable or are subject to a contingency which makes the amount of damages uncertain. Contracts under common law require there to have been some attempt to create an equal or reasonably proportionate quota between the damages made and the actual loss. Parties must not lose sight of the principal compensation and they must keep the time of execution and the difficulty of the calculations in mind when drafting the contract. For example, suppose Neal Townsend agrees to lease a store-front to Richard Smith, from which Richard intends to sell jewellery. If Townsend breaches the contract by refusing to lease the store-front at the appointed time, it will be difficult to determine what profits Smith will have lost because the success of newly created small businesses is uncertain. This, would be an appropriate circumstance for Smith to insist upon a liquidated damages clause in case Townsend fails to perform.

In the case of construction contracts, courts have refused to enforce liquidated damages provisions, choosing to follow the doctrine of concurrent delay when both parties have contributed to the overall delay of the project. Contracts in the NEC3 family use the term'low service damages' and include a Low Service Damages Schedule. In Australia, the definition of liquidated damages applies to the situations where upon the failure of a primary stipulation, imposes a detriment to the first party or a benefit to the second party by a secondary stipulation collateral to the primary stipulation. UK bank and credit card customers were being charged as much as £39 for a single transaction that took them over their credit limit. Consumers argued. In 2007 the Office of Fair Trading investigated the charges being imposed on customers of credit card companies. In its report, the OFT claimed these charges were unlawful under UK law as they amounted to a penalty, it said it would be prepared to investigate any charge over £12, though this was not intended to indicate that £12 is a fair and acceptable charge.

The OFT said it would be up to a court to determine such an amount based on the established legal precedent that the only recoverable cost would be actual costs incurred. The credit card companies did not produce evidence of their actual costs to the OFT, instead insisting their charges are in line with clear policy and information provided to customers. Receipt of liquidated damages and intimately linked with the purpose of the profit-making apparatus, is a capital receipt; the amount received by the assessee towards compensation for sterilization of the profit earning source is not in the ordinary course of business. Hence, it is a capital receipt in the hands of the assessee. In 2009 the Supreme Court ruled that terms in bank account contracts were not capable of being penal, bar those applicable to NatWest Bank customers between 2001 and 2003; the court ruled that the charges were a charge for a service, not a penalty for damages for breaching a contract term. In 2012, the High Court of Australia allowed an appeal against findings of the Federal Court of Australia that'exception fees' imposed by the ANZ Bank could not constitute an unenforceable penalty.

The High Court found that fees were not incapable of being characterised as penalties because they were not charged upon breach of contract. Conversely, in 2014, the federal court described $35 late payment fees by ANZ Banking Group to customers who failed to make their monthly minimum credit card repayment as being “extravagant and unconscionable” and ordered for these fees to be reimbursed. ANZ appealed. In 2015, the full court overturned Justice Gordon’s first instance judgment that credit card late payment fees charged by ANZ to its customers constituted penalties at law and equity; the decision otherwise upholds Justice Gordon's findings that honour and overlimit fees charged by ANZ were not penalties, unconscionable or unfair. While the decision is fact specific, it represented a major setback for other class actions based on penalties. Paciocco appealed to the High Court; the last chapter of the bank fees saga took place in July 2016 where th