If a second builder completes a house at higher cost, why would this affect your claim for damages against the first builder? Here are the facts of a problem question, created by my law teacher. B1 (Builder 1) had agreed to build four backyard micro-cabins for P (Plaintiff), a developer, at a cost of £5 each. It was agreed that each house would be paid for when it was completed and that Al, an architect, must certify all completions. B1 completed two houses but P refused to pay because, P claimed, the windows were not up to specification. Al died just before the second house was completed and had not issued the certificates of completion. The two houses were each worth £7 on the open market. Because of P’s refusal to pay, B1 was unable to pay his suppliers what he owed them. In turn, they refused to allow B1 to have more building materials on account. B1 stopped building. Consequently, P entered the site and used B1’s materials, valued at £1 and completed the third house. P then engaged B2 (Builder 2) to build the fourth house, with B2's own materials, at an agreed contract price of £6. P paid B2 after B2 completed this fourth house. Advise P. All prices should be multiplied by 1000, but I didn’t write out the 0’s to simplify the facts. My teacher claims that About the final house completed by B2, you must consider whether the increased cost of completion would affect P’s claim for damages against B1 by reference to case law relating to the expectation interest. Can someone explain this? What does my teacher mean? I know that Expectation Interest equates to the net value of what the innocent party would have received, had the contract been performed. The expectation measure aims to put the claimant in the position that he would have been in had the contract been performed in accordance with its terms (Robinson v Harman (1848)). This measure falls short of achieving this aim in a number of ways: for example, contract law does not compensate for all types of loss, it requires the type of loss to be reasonably foreseeable, it lays down certain causation requirements, and the claimant may be unable to recover if they have not taken sufficient steps to minimise the loss they suffer.
The second builder's higher cost affects the claim for damages because it forces the buyer to pay more than he expected to under the contract. Generally speaking, the formula for expectation damages is (Cover price - Contract price = Expectation damages). Here, P expected to lose £5 and gain a fourth cabin. So: Contract price: P's expected loss if B1 hadn't breached was £5. Cover price: P's actual loss to cover for B1 breaching was £6. Expectation damages: £6 in cover - £5 contract price = £1 in damages, putting him back at the £5 loss he bargained for.
You did not specify a country or the specific contracts that might rule your condominium. At least in some jurisdictions indeed the repair cost of private portions cannot be shared. Moreover, you may not be required to pay some costs for common portions if you refuse to do so and won't make use of them. Do I have to sue them to fix this issue? A lengthy law-suit is too costly for me. If I refuse to pay $2k and only pay 1.2k, will I be facing any legal troubles? You will probably manage to continue paying just 1.2k, and have them have to sue you if they want to collect that supposedly owned money from you. However, there might be some requirements about providing notification of your refusal in a certain way or before some time elapses. I would recommend you to consult a local lawyer, it will be well-spent money. Plus, that refusal is actually sent by your lawyer (rather than just telling you how/what to say), should make your &quot;law-understanding neighbor&quot; think twice about going forward with their attempt of having you pay for it.
It primarily depends on the title that you have to the house: are you &quot;joint tenants with right of survivorship&quot;. This could have happened when you bought the house; it also could have been done after the fact in various ways. In that case, the house is outside of your wife's estate (which, under the circumstances, is divided between children and you). The lender might be confused about the status of the property, but they might be right, so the question is, what is your legal &quot;interest&quot; in the house, that is, does the title document say &quot;tenants in common&quot;? Assuming that the property is not recorded as JTWROS, then there are two matters to attend to. First, the lender may need to be satisfied, somehow, that they aren't taking a risk by refinancing when you aren't really the full owner. The second is clarifying actual ownership. Estates Code 201.0002-.003 govern intestate succession with a surviving spouse, where the dividing question is whether it is a community estate or not, which then implies shares for children. In that case, the children are part-owners, so you need their consent to e.g. sell the house (that is, this is a complication that needs to be fixed). Basically, you have to get a lawyer, and straighten this out.
According to https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/blog/stamp-duty-for-first-time-buyers-your-questions-answered: To be classified as a first-time buyer you must never have owned a residential property in the UK or abroad. This includes freeholds and interests in leaseholds. Being a guarantor on a mortgage is not "owning a property", having your name on the deeds at the Land Registry is. However, your brother should get his own solicitor (the mortgage company may insist on this), who can confirm my understanding is correct. More importantly, the solicitor can explain the risks of being a guarantor to him - he may decide to back out. (Having said which, I acted as guarantor for my son when he rented as a student.)
If you had an agreement that amounts to a contract, it is binding even if it was informal. However, if your agreement was not in writing, it might be hard to prove. You can easily prove that you transferred money to the other party. But can you prove that it was a loan an not a gift? And even if it is agreed to be a loan, if no repayment time was specified, what says that the debt is due now? Was the agreement really for a loan repayable on demand? The court would have to determine what your real contract was, or what contract can be implied from the actions of the parties. Also, if you are in a common-law jurisdiction, there could be a question of what consideration there was for the loan. Without consideration, there is no valid contract in such a jurisdiction. Perhaps a promise to repay could be treated as sufficient consideration. Small-claims courts do deal with unclear verbal contracts on a regular basis, but the outcome will depend on the facts of the case, and on the details of local law. It might be wise to consult a local lawyer with small-claims experience. A single consultation should not be too expensive. In response to comment If the &quot;written binding agreements&quot; include a statement from the other person that this is a loan, and a promise to repay it, you are in a stronger position than I had thought from the original question. The question for the court would be, since there was no due date agreed, what is a reasonable date to impose. The court might treat it as a loan repayable on demand, or specify some particular date for repayment.
Unless there is some surprise in the wording of your contract, you have no realistic legal recourse. You had a hope that the warranty could provide something which it does not provide. A "reasonable person" would read the wording of the contract and understand that it requires pre-approval, and does not include an exception clause "unless it gets really cold". You could hire a lawyer to sue them and maybe a judge would find against the company on some social policy grounds, i.e. the contract is against public policy (after all, under landlord-tenant laws, in the analogous situation the landlord would be obligated to fix the heat problem). Since these contracts are quite widespread and well-known, and legislatures have not declared them illegal, it is safe to conclude that there is no public policy being violated. So even if a sympathetic judge were to rule in your favor, it would be overruled on appeal. If the warranty company delayed processing your request in order to get you to blink and break the terms of the contract, that could be held to be a bad-faith dealing. It is more likely that it is just a very slow process, slower than the average HVAC contractor, who would buy full-price replacements and have many workers on call to address your needs.
Assuming that both policies actually cover the loss, this is called “double insurance.” Generally speaking, you can claim against both insurers, but you can only recover the loss once. See my answer to another question about double recovery for more about the general principles that apply when a plaintiff attempts to recover the same loss from multiple defendants. In the specific context of insurance, there will normally be terms in the insurance contract as well as local statutes which require the claimant to notify the insurers of one another’s existence, and determine the extent to which the insurer who paid can recover contribution from the insurer who didn’t. This issue is particularly complex in the United States where insurance is separately regulated in each state. Some of the complexities that arise are reviewed in Russ, The double insurance problem – a proposal (1961) 13(2) Hastings Law Journal 183, although this is now rather outdated. In the context of health insurance, the adjustment of liability for doubly-insured risks is referred to as coordination of benefits and may be regulated by model laws promulgated by the National Association of Insurance Commissions. I am not aware of any model law or legal principles applicable throughout the United States that would determine the outcome in the case you describe of home and car insurance.
Neither The contract is completed when each party has totally fulfilled its obligations under the contract. In this case, it is when the purchaser has consumed or otherwise dealt with the banana to their satisfaction. The vendor has ongoing obligations under the contract until this happens. For example, obligations that the banana is of merchantable quality and fit for purpose. If the purchaser peels the banana and discovers that it is "off" or eats the banana and develops food poisoning then the vendor still has obligations and can be sued under the contract. Yes, I realize that no one is going to sue anyone over a rotten banana but let's assume that "banana" is code for 54km of motorway construction and £1 is actually £1 billion. When is the contract formed? This is not a trivial determination and there are literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of lawsuits that have turned on this exact question. Once the contract is formed its binding on both parties; until then, either can walk away (subject to estoppel) The traditional analysis involves offer and acceptance. In your banana scenario, the shop displaying "Banana's: 50p/each" (it's a fruit shop - they always have unnecessary apostrophes) is not an offer - it is an invitation to treat. An offer is made by Ben placing the banana on the counter and proffering the £1, it is accepted by Sam taking the £1. At this point, the sale is binding on both parties. Ben has fulfilled all his obligations under the contract, Sam still has some. In addition to those discussed above, he owes Ben 50p. Strictly speaking, this is not an obligation under the contract but a debt due and payable. Consumer protection law The proceeding is a strict contract law interpretation - many jurisdictions have consumer protection legislation (and food safety laws for bananas) that impose additional protections and may change the contract law position.