When you’re dealing with real estate, land use, environmental issues or even general business operations, your contractual relationships can be crucial to your success. To ensure you get a fair deal out of these agreements, you have to tailor the terms to the issue at hand while advocating that they be fair to your position. But even if it seems like the contract you’ve negotiated is favorable, circumstances can change. And when they do, you might find yourself on the receiving end of breach of contract allegations.
There isn’t just one way to approach a breach of contract case. Instead, you have to assess your options and pick the one most suited to your circumstances and most likely to lead to success. Here are a few that you may be able to implement in your case.
- Fraudulent misrepresentation: Here, you argue that you were essentially tricked into agreeing to the contract by the other party’s knowingly false or reckless claims about material facts. Remember that you’ll have to show detrimental reliance here.
- Waiver: The other party can’t sleep on their right to enforce a contract. If they do, then it may be deemed that they’ve waived their right to take legal action in the future. So, consider whether the plaintiff in your case has failed to act on breaching behavior in the past.
- Unclean hands: If you can show that the other side breached the contract, too, then you may escape any sort of liability. After all, the other party can’t act in bad faith and then expect to hold you accountable for failing to uphold your end of the bargain.
An improperly handled breach of contract case can spell trouble for your business. It can harm your financial stability, your reputation and your client relations. Fortunately, you may be able to escape these consequences by building an aggressive breach of contract defense.