Contractual Duties: Performance, Breach, Termination and Remedies 3rd Edition with 1st Supplement

Contractual Duties: Performance, Breach, Termination and Remedies provides guidance from three leading contract academics on the duties at play in a contract that is in dispute: its performance, breach, termination and the remedies available.

Part 1 covers rescission: firstly its principles and process are explained, and then each of the possible grounds for rescission, including misrepresentation, mistake and non-disclosure; duress, undue pressure and influence; impaired capacity, unconscionable conduct and breaches of fiduciary duty. Part 2 introduces the different types of breach and the terminology that governs them and explains strict and non-strict obligations. Part 3 deals with discharge by impossibility, illegality or frustration. Part 4 discusses remedies available, beginning with the right to sue for a debt and the limits to such an action, going on to cover damages, and then dealing in detail with specific enforcement.

The authors cover the structure of the law of damages, laying out the measures of award. In addition, they explains financial loss, covering the various ways of expressing the loss, via concepts such as expectation, reliance, consequential damage, ‘cost of cure’ and balance sheet calculation. There is also a chapter dedicated to agreed damages.

The third edition contains substantial case law updates, including numerous Supreme Court decisions, across all four key areas of the book since the last edition appeared in 2017.

The 1st Supplement published in July 2022 includes fresh commentary and cases covering each chapter of the main work, updating the Third Edition, published in 2020, to 1 April 2022. The Supplement considers over 50 recent cases and updates the readers on recent develpments throught the Third Edition, including:

• Rescission: Case law on various grounds of rescission (Misrepresentation; Mistake; Duress; Bribery); bars to rescission (affirmation, lapse of time, damages in lieu); and, consequences of rescission.
• Breach and Performance: Cases on de minimis default in loan repayment; implied renunciation by conduct or inaction; when is a term a promissory condition, consequences of termination or discharge on liquidated damages clause; an innocent party’s waiver by election
• Frustration: Discharge by Impossibility, Illegality or Frustration: Case law on frustration precluded by express contractual provision; exceptional market event as a valid force majeure clause
• Remedies: Cases relating to claims in debt, financial loss, non-pecuniary loss, remoteness of loss, on causation, mitigation and the conduct of the claimant, gain-based awards, specific performance, and, injunctions