Why was the adjective &quot;special&quot; embraced for &quot;special damages&quot;? Source: A Brief Introduction to Law in Canada (Mar. 2017). p. 173 Middle. As in tort law, the most important remedy in contract law is damages. Contract damages classified differently, though. three main categories in contract law are: (1) expect- damages, (2) reliance damages, and (3) restitution damages. Punitive damages may also be available, but only in usual cases. Expectation damages attempt to place the innocent party in the position she would have been in if the contract had been performed as promised and all the contractual representa-tions were true. This method of assessing damages is the standard method used to calculate damages in contract disputes. Expectation damages typically claimed include out-of-pocket expenses to correct defective performance (for example, where construction work is shoddy and has to be fixed) and loss of profits (for example, where a commodity was not delivered and the purchaser was unable to resell for a profit as planned). Expectation damages sometimes have alternate names depending on what they represent or how they are calculated. For instance, out-of-pocket expenses can also be called special damages because they have already been incurred and are certain. The term general damages can be used to describe the value of a lost expectation that is not specifically quantifiable, such as the enjoyment the plaintiff hoped to experience on a vacation (where a vacation planner failed to deliver as promised). Liquidated damages, which are another type of ex-pectation claim, refer to damages that the parties have calculated in advance. They can only be claimed, however, where the parties have put a clause in the contract setting out what the damages are to be, and where the amount represents a genuine pre-estimate of the loss ex-pected to be suffered in the event of breach. Liquidated damages clauses can save the par-ties the trouble of arguing about what the damages are if the contract is broken. The use of "special" for "special damages" appears outlandish and unfit to me. What exactly is special about such damages, when they are predictable and calculable?
This is sense A. 1b of ‘special’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: Designating a thing: specific, individual or particular to the specified person, thing or set. Now rare (in later use tending to merge with or be understood as sense A. 4a). Special damages are those that can be specified by reference to particular expenses. They are not exceptional or unusual. As noted in the OED, ‘special’ is rarely used in this sense today; modern English users would be more likely to say ‘specific.’ However, the special/general distinction is still used in terms like ‘special/general counsel’ and ‘special/general relativity.’
What do the contracts with your suppliers and the policy with your insurer say? Changes in government regulation do not ipso facto relieve Parties of the obligations under a contract under common (English) law. Contracts are allowed to allocate the risk of force majeure (and indeed, to define it because it has no common law meaning) but if they don’t, then each party bears their own risk and if they fail to honour their obligations they are in breach of contract. Common law does have the doctrine of frustration, however, that is much narrower and must result in the inability of the contract to be completed at all. And then there are consumer rights which may apply. When the dust settles, we are likely to see a lot of litigation around force majeure. Your venue appears to be complying with both the law and their obligations under the contract so you have no breach of contract claim against them and no trigger for the insurance policy. If you choose to cancel, then you broke the contract. Importantly, the position is reversed in civil law jurisdictions - a party unable to fulfil their obligations under a contract is not in breach.
In placing an order (for anything, not just in a restaurant) and in the supplier accepting it then a legally binding verbal contract has been created. There are terms that come into being implicitly: some come from statute law and some from common law. For example, in most jurisdictions there will be either a common law or specific statute that requires the product to be of merchantable quality and fit for the purpose the customer explicitly or implicitly made known to the vendor. In a restaurant, this means that the food must be presented in a way that enables you to eat it and it must be fit for human consumption. It also means that, in the absence of a time for delivery being specified, that the meal must be delivered within a reasonable time. Reasonable has a specific legal meaning and is an objective test: what an ordinary, reasonable and prudent person would expect in the specific circumstances. It is clear that a reasonable time varies with the circumstances. Reasonable in McDonalds is different from reasonable in a 3 Michelin star restaurant and also different from the same McDonald's when it is obvious to the customer that they are currently insanely busy. If the supplier does not supply the goods and services within a reasonable time then they have breached a term of the contract. The customer has several options: repudiate the contract and sue for damages if this is a breach of a condition of the contract (a condition is a term that is fundamental to the contract; late delivery of food probably isn't a condition), repudiate the contract and sue for damages if this is a major breach of a term of the contract (late delivery probably is), sue for damages if this is an intermediate breach of a term or a breach of a warranty. Enough generalities, for your specific queries: What law in involved in restaurant orders? Contract law, consumer protection law, health and safety law, business law, food hygiene laws, tax laws etc. etc. If I go into a restaurant and order hundreds of dollars of food, then leave before it arrives, I would imagine there is some recourse that the proprietor could take. Sure, there is a contract, you breached it, the restaurant can sue for damages. In addition, they could make a complaint to the police that you have acted fraudulently by ordering food you never intended to pay for. However, if I order a single item and it doesn't show up for over an hour, despite me inquiring about it's status, would I be compelled to pay? It depends on if an hour is a reasonable time or not. By inquiring you have demonstrated that you don't believe that it is but you may not be "an ordinary, reasonable and prudent person". If the breach is actual and egregious enough then you probably have the right to repudiate the contract; that means the contract is at an end and neither of you have any further obligations under it including an obligation to pay. That said, you would be on surer ground if you attempted to renegotiate the contract to make time a condition. "Look, if the meal is not here in 15 minutes, I'm leaving"; if the restaurateur accepts this renegotiation by, for example, saying "I'm terribly sorry, we will sort it out" then your position is much clearer.
The &quot;contract&quot; (sometimes called a charitable pledge or a pledge to make a donation) is not enforceable under contact law because there is no consideration. From a contract law perspective, it isn't really a contract at all. This fact pattern is literally the &quot;standard&quot; example of a &quot;contract&quot; that is unenforceable for lack of consideration. The promises made in the charitable pledge might be enforceable under an equitable doctrine called promissory estoppel, if someone detrimentally relies upon the promise made in the contract and it is not inequitable to do so. As a practical matter, however, donees almost never sue to enforce a pledge to make a donation. A donative pledge should also be distinguished from a transfer document, which is also not a contract. In a transfer document, the donor is unilaterally giving something to someone, and the recipient is signing merely to affirm that they accept the transfer being made to them, rather than rejecting the donation and disclaiming it.
This is part of an indemnification clause. Basically, the idea is that the service provider guarantees that if your business gets harmed because they let in an intruder, then they will absorb the losses if somebody sues you, as long as they have control of the court case and you cooperate with them in defending the court case. So, for example, imagine you are using a web hosting service. Suppose there is a vulnerability in the hosting service computers, and a hacker is therefore able to break into your web site and steal your customer information. Your customer sues you for allowing their credit card to fall into the hands of a hacker. The web hosting service's insurance will pay the damages if the lawsuit succeeds, as long as you let their lawyers (ie the insurance company's lawyers) run the defense of the lawsuit and you cooperate with them. The reason this language is there is because the "service provider" has an insurer that is guaranteeing them if they get hacked or something, then the insurer will cover any damages. The insurer requires them to make all their clients (like you) sign an indemnification agreement which includes the control clause.
Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.
The landlord is entitled to damages Damages under a contract are to restore the innocent party to the position they would have been in had the breach not occurred. This means the landlord is entitled to rental payments of a monthly basis for the balance of the lease. However, the landlord is also obliged to reasonably mitigate the damage, typically by finding a new tenant as soon as possible. Let’s make the example concrete. Let’s assume the rent is $1,000 per month and that there is no pro-rata clause in the contract (as is typical). That means whether the tenant uses 1 day or 31 days of a month, they owe a full month’s rent. When the tenant moves out, they owe $3,000 (plus interest). They also have an ongoing obligation to pay rent each subsequent month. This gives unmitigated damages of $17,000. The landlord spends $500 to clean and get the property ready to rent. $1,000 commission to the agent and $500 on advertising. After 2 months they find a tenant at $800 per month. Damages would be $3,000 for the unpaid rent, $2,000 for the out of pocket, $2,000 for the unoccupied months and 14 x $200 = $2,800 for the lower rent. So, $9,800. Typically, a security deposit can be put against unpaid rent but might not be allowed to be deducted for economic loss from a breach.
One analysis is in Bow Cycle &amp; Motor Co. Ltd. v. Murray, 2006 ABPC 366, by Judge O'Ferrall (now Justice of the Court of Appeal of Alberta). The defendant sat on a motorcycle, positioned it fully upright, and when he returned the motorcycle to rest on the kickstand, the bike crashed to the floor. There were three potential paths to liabilty argued, none successfully: negligence (for example, if the defendant had repositioned the kickstand at any point—there was no evidence of this) trespass to goods (but this would have required intentional or negligent treatment of the good) contract (which would have required a clear &quot;you break it, you buy it&quot; policy with express statement that the customer would be liable even for non-negligent damage—there wasn't) Context mattered. Liability might be made more strict more easily in a china shop. The judge wrote: in the end, this case must turn on the presence or absence of negligence because, at least in the circumstances of a motorcycle shop, a “break it, you buy it” arrangement would have required an element of fault on the part of the breaker, absent a very clearly communicated term that the customer pays irrespective of negligence. There being no such term and negligence having not been proven, I find the Defendant not liable. In so doing, I considered the china shop analogy. It may be that in a china shop one could infer that the customer pays for broken items irrespective of fault because there is no need to touch the item in order to make the purchase decision. But in order to make an informed purchase of a motorcycle, the purchaser must try it on for size and the fact that he must do so makes it much more difficult to infer a no-fault promise to pay for damage howsoever caused.