An Introduction To Breach Of Contract Law
Breach of contract law in England and Wales is a subject which creates the majority of civil law cases. As a basic description, a breach of contract law can be any kind of departure from the agreed terms and conditions of a contract, from terms of employment to shipping and delivery of a package. When a breach has caused one or more parties to experience a loss, that party could find itself entitled to be reimbursed.
The Elements of a Breach of Contract Law Claim
Contract law is really a case of strict liability, so to be able to establish legal responsibility it is merely necessary to demonstrate that a contractual duty hasn’t been carried out, or has been undertaken only in part. The only exception to this is within circumstances of contractual obligation to take reasonable care, where it is essential to establish exactly what “reasonable care” signifies in the circumstances.
To be able to determine that a defendant should be liable to pay out damages for a breach of contract, however, 3 factors have to be proven on the balance of probabilities.
Firstly, the claimant must be able to show that the defendant’s breach caused a material loss, known as the principle of causation. In employment law, for example, unlawful dismissal leading to a loss of earnings for six months would be a material loss caused by the employer’s breach of the employment contract.
The claimant must also be able to demonstrate that the loss was “not too remote”; i.e. the loss falls within the limits of the rule of remoteness, as discussed below.
Finally, the claimant must then demonstrate that they have taken “reasonable steps” to mitigate the losses they have suffered. What is reasonable will depend on the individual circumstances of the case but in breach of employment cases, amongst others, this may include taking part in any appeals processes laid out in the terms of employment, applying for unemployment benefit where available, etc.
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The Rule of Remoteness In Breach of Contract Law
The principle behind damages as a civil remedy is to return the injured party to as close an approximation of the circumstances they would have been in had the tort (a legal term meaning “wrong”) never occurred. Therefore, in order for a claim for damages from breach of contract to be successful, there must be a loss to claim for, and it must be closely enough linked to the breach of contract for the courts to determine that the defendant would not have suffered it had the breach not occurred.
In order to sue for a breach of contract, there must be a failure to uphold a contractual duty. Where this can be proven and a loss has occurred, the injured party may be liable for compensation provided the loss is not “too remote”. The purpose of compensation is to return the injured party to the state they would have been in had the breach not occurred and where the breach is not so repudiatory that the it is terminated, the contact may continue.
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