If you accidentally breached your contract or have an arrangement with someone who has breached theirs, it’s important for you to know how to handle it. Your contract is a binding agreement, but the way you handle a breach might vary based on any number of factors.
The breach may be described as material or immaterial. Immaterial breaches may not have as significant of impacts as material breaches, so there are different remedies for each. Your contract should have already discussed possible penalties for breaching the contract.
What’s an example of a breach of contract?
Let’s say that you are a business owner who makes wedding cakes. You sign a contract with a supplier to receive milk, butter, flour and other supplies to your bakery every other day.
Lately, those supplies have been coming at unusual intervals. You had one delivery come in the morning on the first day of the month, but the second didn’t come until the fifth. That meant that you didn’t have the supplies you needed to make cakes on all of your business days and had to hurry to make them on other days. The schedule wasn’t discussed and has a real impact on your business. This change may be a breach of contract because you’re receiving your order less often than you want and in a lower quantity than what you expect.
Mistakes happen, and not every breach has to result in litigation. However, if a breach of contract has significantly impacted your business, you may want to look into discussing remedies for the breach with your attorney.
