This article focuses on two commonly used methods for quantifying certain types of damages, the measured mile (for lost productivity claims) and the total cost method, and then turns to a question that cuts across all forms of damage claims.
When you win a bid, you might be singing that everything is going your way. Then something goes wrong. The owner hands you defective plans, sits on RFI responses or other critical information, or otherwise upends the work. The costs pile up through no fault of your own. You feel wronged, and you want to be made whole. But a feeling that you got burned is not enough. To recover, that feeling has to become something the law recognizes as damages. So, what are damages, and how do you prove them?
At bottom, contract damages are the money that puts the non-breaching party (i.e., the party that doesn’t breach the contract) in the position it would have occupied had the contract been performed.
Reprinted courtesy of Bradley E. Sands, Jones Walker LLP and Katie McCracken, Summer Associate, University of Georgia School of Law
Mr. Sands may be contacted at bsands@joneswalker.com