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Law Outlines Modern American Remedies 4th Ed. Laycock Outlines

Compensatory Damages Paying For Harm Outline

Updated Compensatory Damages Paying For Harm Notes

Modern American Remedies 4th Ed. Laycock Outlines

Modern American Remedies 4th Ed. Laycock

Approximately 64 pages

This is an outline for Remedies and the book "Modern American Remedies" 4th Edition by Douglas Laycock. I am at UVA Law and Laycock was my professor, this outline encompasses both his lectures and his book....

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Modern American Remedies 4th Ed. Laycock Outlines. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Compensatory Damages: Paying for Harm

Compensatory Damages: Provide an award of money damages to aggrieved party to compensate for any loss or injury. Compensatory Damages = General Damages + Consequential (Special) Damages

  • General (Direct) Damages: Initial impact of the wrong, value of what was took (value of what was taken, destroyed, damages, or failed to deliver) **rough definition

  • Consequential (Special) Damages: Things that come after the initial wrong [everything that happens as a consequence of the initial impact] **rough definition

  • In Tort: Objective of damages it to make the plaintiff whole by awarding sufficient money to indemnify the plaintiff for the loss (position that would have been occupied “but for the wrong”)

  • In Contract: Of course, position would have occupied “but for the wrong”, but what does that mean?

    • Expectation: seeks to place Plaintiff in the position she would have occupied if the contract had been performed [this embodies the true rightful position standard, Neri]

      • Gross Expectancy: measured by the full payment or performance promised under the contract, which seller expected would cover the full cost of their own payment or performance plus a profit margin

      • Net Expectancy: expected profit on the contract

    • Reliance: seeks to put P in the position she would have occupied if the contract had never been made

      • Essential Reliance: expenditures necessary to perform the contract

      • Incidental Reliance: all other reliance, etc. foregone opportunities

      • **If defendant can prove that plaintiff would have lost money on the contract, the rule is that any loss must be subtracted from any reliance recovery (damages for breach should not make P better off than if K was fully performed)

CONTRACT COMPENSATORIES

All these remedies attempt to put buyer/seller in place they would have been had contract been performed (the parties “rightful position”)

Market price not necessarily = TC?

Incidental Damages reasonable charges incurred because of other party’s breach (cost to store goods because of breach, cost to advertise to try and resell because of breach etc.)

Consequential Damages Everything that comes after the initial wrong (“everything that happens as a consequence of the initial impact”)

  • Under UCC Seller CANNOT recover consequential damages, Buyer CAN (but remember Hadley v. Baxendale – in order to have proximately caused that damage buyer must have made it known to seller)

SELLER’S REMEDIES FOR BUYER BREACH

UCC Gives Seller Choice of Three Remedies - §2-703: When buyer rejects or revokes acceptance of goods or fails to pay, seller may: (a) withhold delivery of such goods, (d) resell and recover damages as provided in § 2-706, recover damages for non-acceptance in § 2-708, or in a proper case the price in §2-709

UCC Resale § 2-706: Seller can resell the goods to another buyer “in good faith and in a commercially reasonable manner” and recover

= (contract price – resale price) + incidental damages – expenses saved by buyer’s breach

UCC Damages for Non-Acceptance - §2-708(1):

[Market Price (at time and place for tender) – Contract Price] + incidental damages– expenses saved by buyer’s breach. Subject to (2) [below:

  • §2-708(2): If (1) is inadequate to put the seller in as good a position as performance would have done then the measure of damages is the profit which seller would have made from full performance + any incidentals

    • This is the VOLUME SELLER provision – If you have many of X that you are selling, breach of K means you could have sold one more if buyer did not breach. If you are just selling one car though, you still would have only sold one car

      • Volume Seller does not work for (1) because assuming contract price=market price, your damages would only be incidental costs (but you lost a sale). So invoke §2-708(2) and get lost profits + incidentals applied in Neri v. Retail Marine

UCC Action on the Price - §2-709: When buyer fails to pay for goods as they are due and either keeps the goods or the goods are lost or damages after risk of loss has passed to buyer OR has made a reasonable effort to resell them at a reasonable price and could not =

[Contract price + incidental damages]

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BUYER’S REMEDIES FOR SELLER BREACH

UCC Buyer Choice of Remedy in Case of Seller Breach, § 2-711: Where seller fails to make delivery or repudiates, buyer may recover the price he has paid plus: (1) “cover”, (2) damages for non-delivery, §2-713, damages in regard to the accepted goods §2-714

UCC Cover, § 2-712: A buyer can cover by making a good faith purchase of substitute goods without unreasonable delay. [MUST ATTEMPT TO COVER FIRST TO LIMIT CONSEQUENTIALS – DUTY TO MITIGATE]: Formula:

Amount toward purchase price paid to seller + (cover price – contract price) + incidental & consequential damages – expenses saved

UCC Market Damages, § 2-713:

[(Market P when buyer learned of the breach) – (K price)] + (incidental/consequential damages) but minus (expenses saved in consequence of breach)

UCC Damages for Breach in Regard to Accepted Goods, § 2-714:

The measure of damage for breach of warranty = [market value of goods as accepted (at time and place of acceptance) – market value they would have had been as warranted (at time and place of acceptance)], unless special circumstances show proximate damages of a different amount

  • Applied in Chatlos Systems v. National Cash Register, also appears to be regardless of how reasonable the expectation was

  • FORK: What about something ridiculous, like a cancer cure for $2? Probably no, because we can’t value a cancer cure and it is extremely unreasonable to believe this

    • Degree of reasonableness of expectation somewhere between Chatlos and Cancer Cure Hypo

TORT COMPENSATORIES

General Rule for Compensatory in Tort Cases:

= General Damages + Consequential Damages –...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Modern American Remedies 4th Ed. Laycock Outlines.