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| Contract law |
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| Formation |
| Defences |
| Interpretation |
| Dispute resolution |
| Rights of third parties |
| Breach of contract |
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| Quasi-contractual obligations |
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The doctrine[1] of impossibility or impossibility of performance or impossibility of performance of contract is a doctrine in contract law.
In contract law, impossibility is an excuse for the nonperformance of duties under a contract, based on a change in circumstances (or the discovery of preexisting circumstances), the nonoccurrence of which was an underlying assumption of the contract, that makes performance of the contract literally impossible.
For example, if Ebenezer contracts to pay Erasmus £100 to paint his house on October 1, but the house burns to the ground before the end of September, Ebenezer is excused from his duty to pay Erasmus the £100, and Erasmus is excused from his duty to paint Ebenezer's house; however, Erasmus may still be able to sue under the theory of unjust enrichment for the value of any benefit he conferred on Ebenezer before his house burned down.
The parties to a contract may choose to ignore impossibility by inserting a hell or high water clause, which mandates that payments continue even if completion of the contract becomes physically impossible.
Sometimes it is impossible to perform a contract as a result of war.[2]
- ^ Sources also speak of a principle
- ^ As to impossibility of performance of contract during war, see Arnold Duncan McNair, "War-Time Impossibility of Performance of Contract", Essays and Lectures Upon Some Legal Effects of War, Cambridge, at the University Press, 1920, Chapter 5, p 78; Henry Campbell, "Impossibility of Performance", The Law of War and Contract, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1918, chapter 5, p 263 et seq Google; K V R Townsend, "Impossibility of Performance of Contracts due to War-Time Governmental Interference" (1941) 8 Current Legal Thought 150; "Impossiblity of Performance of Contracts due to War-Time Regulations" (1918 to 1919) 32 Harvard Law Review 789; Weber, The Effect of War on Contracts, 2nd Ed, 1946, p 445 et seq; MacKinnon, Effect of War on Contract: Being an Attempted Analysis of the Doctrine of Discharge of Contract by Impossibility of Performance: With a Résumé of the Principal Cases decided in the English Courts during the Present War, 1917 Google; Trotter, The Law of Contract during War, 1914, p 57, 58 and 59 et seq Google; Trotter, The Law of Contract during and after War, 3rd Ed, 1919, p 118 et seq; Trotter, Supplement to the Law of Contract during War, 1915, pp 76, 77 and 78 et seq Google; and Coleman Philipson, "Where new circumstances would make lawful fulfilment impossible", The Effect of War on Contracts, 1909, p 78 Google.