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A legal remedy, also referred to as judicial relief or a judicial remedy, is the means with which a court of law, usually in the exercise of civil law jurisdiction, enforces a right, imposes a penalty, or makes another court order to impose its will in order to compensate for the harm of a wrongful act inflicted upon an individual.
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance.
Damages for breach of contract is a common law remedy, available as of right. [1] It is designed to compensate the victim for their actual loss as a result of the wrongdoer’s breach rather than to punish the wrongdoer. If no loss has been occasioned by the plaintiff, only nominal damages will be awarded.
Under common law, a liquidated damages clause will not be enforced if the purpose of the term is solely to punish a breach (in this case it is termed penal damages). [23] The clause will be enforceable if it involves a genuine attempt to quantify a loss in advance and is a good faith estimate of economic loss.
In Australia, punitive damages are not available for breach of contract, [5] but are possible for tort cases.. The law is less settled regarding equitable wrongs. In Harris v Digital Pulse Pty Ltd, [6] the defendant employees knowingly breached contractual and fiduciary duties to their employer by diverting business to themselves and misusing its confidential information.
Expectation damages are damages recoverable from a breach of contract by the non-breaching party. An award of expectation damages protects the injured party's interest in realising the value of the expectancy that was created by the promise of the other party.
When damages are not predetermined/assessed in advance, then the amount recoverable is said to be "at large" (to be agreed or determined by a court or tribunal in the event of breach). The purpose of a liquidated damages clause is to increase certainty and avoid the legal costs of determining actual damages later if the contract is breached.
An incident would not have happened if there was not a breach. Breach can be shown in most jurisdictions if a defendant violates a statute that pertains to safety and the purpose of which is to prevent the result of the case. Note that this is an alternative way to show breach. A violation of statute will not have occurred in every case.