If there’s been a contract breach involving your company, you may feel that the broken contract has caused financial harm to your business. You want to pursue legal action to recoup the money that you’ve lost because you expected the other party to uphold their side of the deal.
However, that person claims that the contract breach didn’t actually cause any financial harm. They still fulfilled the contract. They just missed the deadline, so they were a day or two late. But they still think that they upheld their end of the deal and you don’t deserve any financial compensation. How could a deadline actually cause financial damages?
Deadlines can be critical
Every situation is unique, of course, but a missed deadline certainly can qualify as a breach of contract and may cause significant financial harm.
For example, perhaps you run a catering company and you have a supplier for all of your raw ingredients. If you order very specific ingredients for a graduation party or a wedding reception, you need them to arrive on the specified date so that you can serve the meal to all of the guests. Missing the deadline means that your catering company has to substitute other items or buy the products from another source, both things that could cause harm to your business.
You may even lose the job entirely and run the risk of getting a negative reputation, even though you know it is no fault of your own. This could dramatically impact your ability to earn money in the future if people won’t hire your catering business because of reviews relating to this incident.
In other words, a deadline may seem like a “minor” breach, but the amount of damage it can cause is significant. Be sure you understand all of your legal options.