In the business-to-business world, breach of contract is very common. It is usually best to try and resolve these issues informally outside of court, but this is not always possible. If informal means fail, usually injured parties will seek to have the legal system remedy the situation.
In most cases, if one party breaches a contract, the non-breaching party may seek some sort of relief or remedy under the law. The most common form of remedy for injured parties is damages. According to FindLaw, there are 4 major kinds of damages: compensatory, punitive, nominal and liquidated.
Compensatory and punitive
The most common kind of damage is compensatory. This form of damage aims for the breaching party to provide monetary compensation enough to place the injured party back in the same position they were in prior to the breach.
Punitive damages are additional payments on top of compensatory damages. Punitive damages, as the name implies, punish a breaching party for particularly egregious acts. These are rare in a business setting but do occur.
Nominal and liquidated
Nominal damages are smaller than compensatory or punitive. The courts will award these when a breach of contract does injure a business party, but the injured party sustained no actual monetary damages on account of the breach.
Liquidated damages address damages that the parties stipulated in the original contract. In many cases, parties will estimate damages that could occur if a breach happens in the future, and note these in the contract.
If you are the injured party in a breach of contract case, there are many varieties of damages available to you. If you cannot handle a breach of contract outside of court, a legal remedy may be best.
