Frustration of purpose, brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and commercial contracts

Kovač, Mitja (author), Albrecht, Paul (author)

Lawyers and commercial contracting have been stressed by extraordinary uncertainty over the past four years. Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic’s uncertain outcomes and the debate on the appropriate application of the frustration doctrine represent one of the most challenging issues for contract law scholars and practitioners. This paper contributes to the extensive scholarly debate on whether Brexit and Covid-19 constitute frustration of purpose events in contracts by exploiting the findings of the economic literature on the consequences of supervening events. It offers a conceptual framework for an improved legal intervention in case of supervening events in which a court must decide whether a certain event classifies as frustration of purpose and whether to discharge the promisor’s obligations.

• Language: English
• Keywords: brexit, pandemic, commercial business, legislation
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: Str. 1-32
• Numbering: Iss. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-135646
• UDC: 346
• ISSN on article: 1459-9686
• DOI: 10.5278/ojs.njcl.vi1.7126
• COBISS.SI-ID: 98213635
• Publication date in RUL: 23.03.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nordic journal of commercial law
• Publisher: Aalborg Universitetsforlag
• ISSN: 1459-9686
• COBISS.SI-ID: 528570649

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 18.02.2022

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: brexit, pandemija, komercialno poslovanje, zakonodaja