The 3 Examples Of A Breach Of Contract To Know About

When you sign a contract you are going into an agreement in good faith and are expected to perform according to the details in it. As such, you assume the employer who you signed with is also signing in good faith and that you are protected. Unfortunately, there are times when an employer may not live up to their end of the agreement. 

Sometimes it’s in retaliation for suing the company for a slip and fall accident. Or, they have decided to go in a different direction and want to cut you out without needing to compensate you.

These examples are both illegal and are excuses for a company to try to wiggle out of a contract. It’s important to know what a breach of the contract looks like so in this article, we will go over three examples. 

1 – Actual breach of contract

The most obvious and the easiest to litigate by a Calgary labour lawyer is the actual breach of contract.

This simply means that the other party who signed the contract is not upholding their end of the agreement. They have decided to not fulfill their duties and are not willing to try. 

An example would be signing a contract with a company that hires you to upgrade their human resources department for a salary that you both agree to.

Let’s say that they will give you some of the payment upfronts and then pay you according to milestones performed. Only they decide not to give you the money upfront or pay the milestones and instead look for excuses to not pay. 

This will be quickly decided in your favor in a court of law. The other two are slightly more complicated. 

2 – Material breach of contract

This time the contract is signed and both parties so far are working within the agreement. Only at a certain point, part of the agreement is not being upheld.

It could be that a certain date when work is supposed to be done or payment for work done is supposed to be provided but the date has passed. 

Another example is that the work is done by the agreed-upon date but the work was not done as expected or what was agreed to.

You could sue for any damages that this type of breach of contract will cause you such as delays in the work being done that cause revenue to be delayed. 

3 – Minor breach of contract

When the above example of a breach of contract happens but the damage is minimal if anything at all then this is called a minor breach of contract.

It may be annoying that work wasn’t done by the agreed time or date, but if there isn’t much damage, then there isn’t much that can be sued for. 

It’s up to you to make sure that you are able to show that the minor breach is actually a material breach to be able to get an award for the damages.