Contract Law

Posted by admin on April 11, 2009 under Contracts |

Attorneys are frequently involved in hammering out the terms of a contract, safeguarding their clients’ interests and assuring them as much advantage as possible when the contract is executed.  The attorneys for both parties look for loopholes that would allow the other party to end or violate the contract to the detriment of his or her client while providing every option possible if the client should want to terminate or change the contract.  Good legal counsel can save an individual or a corporation from being taken advantage of by the other party while also saving them many times the price of their fee.

However, contracts can be legally broken when the right circumstances are met.  Misrepresentation, which involve falsifying facts to induce a party to enter into a contract, is one criterion for voiding a contract, as is of fraud.  There are two types of fraud, fraud in factum and fraud in inducement.  The former determines if a party was actually aware that they were entering a contract.  If not, there was no meeting of minds and the contract is considered to have never existed.  The latter refers to leading a party to sign a contract through misrepresentation of facts that, were they aware of the truth, they would never consider such an agreement.

Some contracts may be legally broken or upheld through mistakes.  A unilateral mistake involves only one party mistaking the terms or subject matter of a contract while a mutual mistake has both parties believing that they are contracting for something different from the other party.  Mutual mistakes do not necessarily make the contract voidable by the party who is adversely affected, however, as demonstrated in Raffles v. Wichelhaus.  The plaintiff and defendant both contracted that goods be delivered by a ship called the Peerless.  Unknown to either party, there were two ships of that name, one sailing in October and the other in December.  When the Peerless arrived in December, the defendant refused to accept delivery and the plaintiff turned to the courts for relief.  The court found that this mutual mistake made the contract non-binding and the defendant prevailed.  The well-known Peerless Clause refers to this suit.

Many people think of contract law as boring and mundane but for the most part, a contract law attorney is presented with many interesting and exciting challenges.  An attorney specializing in contract law is an invaluable asset to his or her community and profession.