Читать книгу Canadian Business Contracts Handbook - Nishan Swais - Страница 61

By breaching a contract (i.e., not performing one or more of your obligations under it), you set the stage for a lawsuit being brought against you by the injured party. The practical effect is to create a situation where a court can order you to pay damages.

A contract, therefore, provides the basis for compensation to any party that can successfully claim breach of a term of the contract. As discussed, that compensation is designed to put the injured party in the same position it would have been had the breach not occurred.

With that, we are now in a position to supplement what we learned in Chapter 1 and expand on our original definition of a contract.

We can now say that a contract is a legally binding agreement that establishes the respective rights and obligations of the persons contracting, allocates risk among them, and provides a legal basis for compensation (in the event of a breach). That definition captures both what a contract is and what it does.

All that remains to be done in this introduction to writing your own business contracts is to examine what a contract looks like.