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Q.What remedies are available in a breach of contract case?
A.When a breach of contract occurs, the wronged party (plaintiff) may have various remedies at his or her disposal. Although consequential compensatory damages are the most common, depending on the terms of the written contract the plaintiff may be entitled to seek: (1) consequential and incidental damages (money for losses caused by the breach that were foreseeable); (2) attorney fees and costs only if expressly provided for in the contract; (3) liquidated damages if specified in the contract and reasonable in amount; (4) rescission (cancellation of the contract such that both parties are excused from performance and any advanced monies are returned); (5) reformation (the terms of the contract are changed to reflect the parties original actual intent); or (6) specific performance (a court order requiring performance exactly as specified in the contract). Specific Performance is generally only granted in real estate transactions, as the courts do not want to get involved with monitoring performance.
Most commonly the courts will award compensatory damages; that is those damages that were reasonably foreseeable at the time you entered into the contract, and which are sufficiently certain so as not to be "speculative". The purpose of compensatory damages is to put the plaintiff in the position she or he would have been in if the defendant had performed the contract as intended.
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