Solid contracts are the best way to ensure that your business needs are met in a safe and secure fashion. Yet, regardless of how sound your business contracts may seem, there may come a time when the terms of an agreement are violated. Such a breach of contract can lead to tremendous business harm, costing you and your business a significant amount of money, and perhaps damaging your business’s reputation and the goodwill that you’ve worked hard to build with your customers.
That’s why legal action is warranted if you’ve be harmed by breach of contract. However, before you head into your case, you should have a full understanding of what you can get out of your case so that you know how to argue for what you want and deserve.
What remedies can you seek in a breach of contract case?
Depending on the facts, there are various ways that your breach of contract lawsuit can play out. Here are some of the remedies that you can seek in your case:
- Compensatory damages: This is the most commonly sought remedy. Here, you might be able to recover expectation damages, which would be the difference between the original contract price and the actual price you had to pay as a result of the breach or consequential damages, which are those losses that naturally flow from the breach, such as lost revenues that are directly linked to the breach.
- Specific performance: When monetary damages simply won’t make things right after a breach of contract, you may be able to have a court order against the breaching party to live up to their end of the negotiated contract. This remedy is often sought out when the subject of the contract is unique or otherwise special, therefore, rendering compensatory damages inadequate.
- Injunction: Here, the court will order the breaching party to refrain from certain actions. The injunction may be temporary while the pending litigation plays out, or it may wind up being permanent. Injunctions are often seen in the context of breached noncompete, nondisclosure, and other employment contract cases.
- Recission: With recission, you simply cancel the contract so that the parties return to the position they were in prior to the creation of the contract.
- Liquidated damages: Some contracts specify the amount of compensation that is to be paid in the event of breach. This is often seen in situations where calculating compensatory damages is challenging. So, if your contract has a liquidated damages provision and breach occurs, you’re justified in seeking that amount.
- Nominal damages: When a contract has been breached but you can calculate or demonstrate compensatory damages, you might be awarded nominal damages. Although this will be a lesser amount, it might lay the foundation for future legal action against the same defendant. It might also lead to the recovery of attorney fees.
Are you ready to fight for what you deserve?
There’s a lot at stake in a breach of contract case, which is why it’s important that you know how to protect your legal interests. Only then can you rest assured that you know how to fight to obtain the remedy that’s right for you under the circumstances.
We know that the thought of taking legal action can be stressful, but we think that learning about the process and how to present the facts of your specific case will ease your concerns. With that in mind, we encourage you to continue to research this issue so that you can then make the fully informed decisions that are right for you and your business.