Law concepts and applications

Business

A contract is a promise or set of promises that make up an agreement between parties that provides each a legal duty to the other. It also gives each party the right to sue for breach of any those duties. It is the total legal responsibility that results from the parties' agreement and a promise for the breach in which the law distinguishes as a duty (Contracts, n.d.).

The formation of a contract consists of several pieces. The first is there has to be an offer. An offer is an outward demonstration of contractual intention. In this case Press Publishers agreed to provide 100 copies of a handbook to Broadwalk Books with the stipulation that they may return any unused copies of the book within six months. A contract must also have consideration. This is a bargained for exchange between the two parties. In this case there was a bargain for 100 copies of said book for an exchange of a certain amount of money. Once there is a valid contract, which there appears to be, between the parties then both are required to uphold their parts of the bargain. If for some reason the bargain is not upheld then a breach has occurred.

If one side fails to abide by their part of the bargain, then a breach has occurred. A breach happens when one party to a contract makes it impossible for the other parties to perform there part, if a party to the contract does something against the goal of the contract or a party completely refuses to perform their part of the contract. If the breach is immaterial, one may have the option to: ignore or excuse the defect and continue on as if nothing occurred, point out the problem to the responsible side and give them an opportunity to fix it, refuse to pay anything more until it is fixed, or correct the work and deduct the cost from any payment (Contract Law, 2010).

A breach is an unjust failure to perform which goes to the essence of the contract. In this case the contract stipulated that Broadwalk books could return any unused copies of the handbook to Press Publishers within a six-month time frame. Due to the fact that Broadwalk books only sold five copies of the book within that time frame they feel that they should be able to return the other 95 copies. There reasoning is that if the books are unsold then they are unused, and within the stipulation of the contract they are within their rights to return them. If the court were to determine that the books in question were indeed all unused and Press Publishers would not take them back then they would be in violation of the contract.