Contractual Obligations
Contractual obligations refer to the duties and responsibilities that parties agree to fulfill when entering into a contract. These obligations are legally binding and may include payment, delivery of goods or services, or specific performance of certain actions. Breaching contractual obligations can lead to legal consequences, such as financial penalties or court-ordered enforcement of the contract.
6 Key excerpts on "Contractual Obligations"
eBook - ePub- Kenny Chin(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge-Cavendish(Publisher)
...4 Contract Law You should be familiar with the following areas: • the essentials of contract and the effects of the absence of them • rules relating to offer, acceptance and invitation to treat • use of postal and other means of communication on offer and acceptance • rules of consideration • distinction of legal intention to contract on domestic and social agreements • capacity of minors to make contracts and the effect of the Minors’ Contracts Act 1987 • discharge of contract by frustration and the effects of the Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943 • breach of contract and the remedies • consumer contract and related provisions under various statutes • duties of employer and employee, sex and racial discrimination in employment Introduction A contract is an agreement between two or more parties, who promise to give and receive something from each other and who intend that the agreement be legally binding. Except for some special contracts, for example, sale of a house, there is no general legal requirement that a contract has to be in writing. Verbal contracts are as enforceable as written contracts. The problem with verbal contracts is not on validity but on evidence. When nothing is recorded in black and white it is difficult to prove who has said what. Contract law is categorised in the law of obligation. A contract creates a legal obligation between the contracting parties. When one party has not fulfilled, or is not going to fulfil the obligation, he can be sued for breach of contract. The court will help the innocent party by either ordering damages suffered to be compensated, compelling the party in breach to perform the contract (specific performance order) or prohibiting the wrongdoer to act in a way which would cause further breaches (injunction order). It is therefore important to know how and when a binding agreement has been created...
eBook - ePub- Andrew Robertson, James Goudkamp, Andrew Robertson, James Goudkamp(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
...We talk of contractual obligation, the rights of promisees, the duty of the promisor to perform contractual terms in good faith, and so on. 32 This seems to show that the most fundamental rules of contract law in fact do state their own rationale – the rationale that people should perform their serious promises and agreements. If people don’t do that, the law will make them do so, either by injunction or an award of money damages ideally just as good for the promisee as performance. The goal of contract law seems precisely to be to enforce Contractual Obligations. The core principles of the promisor’s obligation to perform and the promisee’s correlative right to performance seem to be about as substantive as you can get. But in fact we cannot get to the point and rationale of contract law by looking at the surface of the core rules and reading them straight. It is true that the surface of the doctrine has it that promisees have contractual rights, which correlate with obligations on the part of promisors. This deontological structure of the legal doctrine naturally suggests that it is aiming to reflect real natural moral rights and obligations that people have. But I believe that this is a mistake. Those legal rights and obligations exist only internally to the legal normative order, which must be justified instrumentally and as a whole; the rights and obligations have no independent intelligibility. So I am against a substantive interpretation of contractual rights and obligations according to which the legal rules mirror and enforce real moral duties. Though such an interpretation does very well by the criteria of fit and coherence, it is ineligible because of its total failure in the dimension of justification. This is for the simple reason that there are no natural promissory obligations and duties...
eBook - ePub- Nicola Lacey(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The clearest division which has been made is that between the legal obligation having to do with our duty to obey the law, which I shall refer to as political obligation (and which will be dealt with in Chapter 6), and legal obligation in the sense of what is meant by a law’s being binding, which I shall refer to as the question of legal obligation. The former is generally treated as a question of moral or political philosophy, thus being ‘banished to another discipline’, at least by strict positivist legal theorists who maintain that there is no logical connection between law and morality. The latter, on the other hand, can be taken as a question of analytical jurisprudence; in describing the content of a legal system, we use the language of duties and obligations rather freely, but apparently without meaning to make any final moral judgment about whether the laws we speak of as generating obligations ought to be obeyed. This second question is thus closely linked to that of legal validity; but not all valid laws directly generate obligations, at least for the private citizen. Some, for example, confer powers—probably a less problematic concept for analysis in descriptive ‘social fact’ terms. But even power-conferring laws are ultimately supported in the structure of legal norms by rules which impose obligations on legal officials to recognise and enforce those powers...
eBook - ePub- Chris Turner(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 The obligations under a contract: Terms AIMS AND OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter you should be able to: Understand the significance of pre-contractual statements (representations) Understand how express terms are incorporated into contracts Understand the application of the parol evidence rule Understand when terms will be implied into contracts either by fact or by law Understand the different classifications of terms Understand how judges construe terms Critically analyse the area Apply the law to factual situations and reach conclusions 6.1 Pre-contractual statements and representations 6.1.1 The negotiation stage We have so far looked at the methods of creating a contract between two parties and some other factors that may have a bearing on the making of a contract or the ability of the parties to enter into such an arrangement. The terms of a contract are otherwise known as the contents of the contract and they represent what the parties have agreed to do or to give under the contract. In other words, they represent the obligations that the parties make to each other. Both sides will have obligations, as we have already seen. This is an inevitable consequence of both the consensus ad idem in offer and acceptance and also of the doctrine of consideration. Under a contract, both sides will have to carry out their own side of the agreement for the contract to be completed. It is commonly a failure to honour a contractual obligation, and therefore a breach of a term of the contract, that leads to a dispute. We would generally expect the terms of a contract to represent the outcome of the pre-contractual negotiations between the parties...
eBook - ePub- Chris Monaghan(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 3 Contract law LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you should be able to: • appreciate the requirements that are needed in order to have a legally enforceable contract; • understand the consequences for the contracting parties where there is misrepresentation, mistake, duress, illegality and undue influence; • comprehend how a contract can be discharged by performance, acceptance, breach and frustration; • demonstrate an awareness of the remedies that are available where a contract has been breached. Every business transaction will involve the use of a contract. Without a contract, a business agreement will not be legally enforceable. This chapter is intended as an introduction to the law of contract. It is essential that you understand the key concepts covered in this chapter. To demonstrate how the law applies in practice we will consider how the law relates to transactions entered into by Snow Ltd. Snow Ltd is based in York and specialises in building loft extensions. Imagine that Snow Ltd wishes to contract with Murphy Ltd, in which case the contract could be written or verbal. Both written and verbal contracts are equally valid. However, in an event of a dispute, it will be easier to prove the terms of the contract if the contract is written...
eBook - ePub- Sir Fred Phillips(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge-Cavendish(Publisher)
...But a duty of care is imposed upon a solicitor by virtue of his retainer and he is liable to the client both in contract and tort for the same breach of duty. 1 BASIS OF CONTRACTUAL LIABILITY What is the basis of the lawyer’s Contractual Obligations? It is his retainer, which is usually in writing, although it can also be given orally. In England under the LSG a solicitor is generally free to decide whether or not to accept instructions from any particular client, 2 but any refusal to act must not be based on race, colour, ethnic or national origins, sex, creed, disability or the sexual orientation of the prospective client. 3 A solicitor must not act, or continue to act, where the client cannot be represented with competence or diligence. 4 When instructions are received from a third party on behalf of a client, a solicitor should receive written instructions from the client that he or she wishes the solicitor to act 5 and the solicitor should in that case consider whether both the third party and the person introduced are clients or whether it is only the person introduced. 6 When another solicitor is already acting for the client in the same matter, the solicitor must not accept instructions. 7 The LSG stipulates how the solicitor should carry out his work, providing as follows: 8 A solicitor must act within his or her client’s express or implied authority. It is essential at the outset for a solicitor to agree clearly with the client the scope of the retainer and subsequently to refer any matter of doubt to the client...
