Template:Event of default vs fundamental breach

The subtle difference between an event of default and a fundamental breach of contract

A fundamental breach of contract is a failure to perform its terms in such a way that deprives the other party of the basic benefit of the contract. This could be anything — like a duck, you know it when you see it — but beyond being an outright failure to perform one’s material obligations it need not, and logically cannot, be comprehensively articulated in the contract.

An event of default, on the other hand, is articulated, usually at painful length, in the contract, which then contains detailed provisions setting out what should happen, to whom, by when, if an event of default befalls either party.

Now while the same set of circumstances might be an event of default and a fundamental breach of contract — almost certainly will be, in fact — treating a case as an event of default is to see it as “infra-contractual action”,, contemplated by and provided for within the four corners of the contract; while treating it as a fundamental breach is thereby to cast the whole contract into the fire. For what good are the promises in it, after all, if the other fellow won’t keep them? Thus alleging fundamental breach is to cancel the contract, with prejudice to your remaining rights under it, and to prostrate yourself at the feet of the Queen’s Bench Division for redress by way of damages, being the liquidated present value of those remaining rights, determined by reference to golden streams of the common law precedent, whose terms might not be quite as advantageous to you as those you might have asked for were you able to agree them in advance. But these common law principles are about the contract, they are not rules of the contract. The contract itself it a smoldering husk.

Thus an event of default leaves the contract on foot, while you exercise your options to extract the value of your party’s commitments under it, without resorting to the courts.

In most scenarios, which route you take might not make a whole heap of difference. In a contract between a supplier and a client, or a borrower and a lender, there is a fundamental asymmetry you can’t cure with fancy words: if the guy owes you money that he hasn’t paid, you will need the court’s help to get it out of him. But master trading contracts are much more normally bilateral. You have exposure, I have collateral. Maybe, the next day, I have exposure and you have collateral. There is a self-help option, and it is quicker and cleaner than praying for relief from the QBD. But exercising it requires the contract to still be there.