We lawyers at McGrath and Spielberger, PLLC deal with contracts every day. Most of those legal agreements have at least one time deadline, while some contracts have numerous deadlines.
Parties to contracts miss deadlines every day, and often those missed deadlines are a breach of the contract. Sometimes the breach of contract is harmless, whilst other times it is devastating; most of the time the consequences are somewhere in between those 2 extremes.
For discussion purposes, let’s assume the other party has missed a contractual deadline or otherwise breached the contract. What can you do – what are your “remedies” ? Keep in mind that what you can do may be quite different vs. what you should do (what you should do will be the topic of a separate article).
Typically, your remedies include any which are specifically stated in the contract and/or any which are generally available under the law. Some legal agreements specify what the remedies are (or may be) upon a breach of contract such as a missed deadline, while some do not. Contracts which do list specific remedies may state that the injured party only has that remedy, or may not have that restriction.
Here is a list of some (not all) of the more common and important ways in which a wronged contractual party may be able to correct legal injuries and/or enforce contractual rights; some of these may have their own linked articles which explain them in greater detail. The right to:
- be put back into the same position (or as close to it as possible) as you were in before the contract and the other party’s breach of contract (“rescission”);
- terminate the contract;
- not perform one’s own duties under the agreement (be careful with this);
- pay a lesser amount to the other party, if the contract involved paying the other party (be careful with this);
- recover actual monetary damages suffered due to the missed deadline;
- a pre-determined monetary amount as stated in the contract (“liquidated damages”);
- obtain a legal order which prevents the other party from doing something (an “injunction”);
- obtain a legal order which requires the other party to perform under the contract (“specific performance”); and
- recover certain legal costs and fees from the other party.
Sometimes, you can only utilize 1 of these remedies, whereas other times you can utilize more than 1. In a lawsuit, a party may initially seek more than 1 type of remedy, even if that party might, at trial, have to “elect which remedy / remedies” vs. continuing to pursue all of them.
It’s important to have a lawyer who has the experience and knowledge to guide you through your possible remedies for breach of contract. We have that experience and knowledge.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for contract law services, such as drafting, editing, analyzing, negotiating, and disputes such as those involving a breach of contract.