Contracts Essentials: Risk, Breach, Termination and Resolution
Contracts are full of risk. Your role is to manage these risks for your clients. Refresh yourself with the essentials of contracts like establishing breaches, assessing damages, and terminating the contract. Explore the four major dispute resolution processes so that your client will ultimately succeed in disputes. WEB229N03
Description
Attend and earn 3 CPD units in Substantive Law
This program is applicable to practitioners from all States & Territories
Chair: Sydney Jacobs, Barrister, Thirteen Wentworth Selborne Chambers
2.00pm to 2.05pm Opening Comments from the Chair
2.05pm to 3.00pm Establishing a Breach and Assessing Contract Damages
- Classifying a breach and establishing a failure to perform
- Understanding and choosing the appropriate remedy: damages, contract debt, restitution, equity
- Assessing contract damages
- Expectation loss, reliance loss, restitution
- Measure of loss
- Combining claims
- Timeline for assessing damages
- Non-pecuniary loss
- Agreed damages clauses
- Recovery of liquidated sums
- Pleading, recovery and strategic considerations
- Practical issues and problems
Presented by Katja J Levy, Principal, Rossello Legal and Richard Douglas, Barrister Francis Burt Chambers
3.00pm to 4.00pm Terminating the Contract
- What are the differences between express rights and general right?
- How do you give effective notice?
- What if the termination is not justified?
- Losing the right to terminate: the importance of election and delay
- What are the consequences of termination?
- Claiming damages after termination
- Some practical tips for effective exercise of termination rights
- A brief examination of the rights of innocent third parties in termination for misrepresentation cases
Presented by Dirk Feinauer, Director, Feinauer Commercial Lawyers
4.00pm to 4.15pm Afternoon Tea
4.15pm to 5.15pm Dispute Resolution Processes in Contract: What, Why and How Much?
Examine four different dispute resolution processes that parties can incorporate into contract, including a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of each process in a contract dispute context and why they might be attractive for parties.
- Expert Determination
- Arbitration
- Mediation
- Litigation
Presented by Peter Yeldham, Partner and Karmen Gallegos, Senior Associate, King & Wood Mallesons
Presenters
Sydney Jacobs
Sydney Jacobs is a barrister at 13 Wentworth Chambers. He read for his LL.M at Cambridge and has a commercial equity practice encompassing property, partnership, corporate law and building & construction disputes. A list of his many cases and publications is to be found on his 13 Wentworth Chambers website. Underscoring a life dedicated to the law (when he is not snowboarding), Sydney is the sole author of two major loose-leaf services, namely: Commercial Damages and Injunctions: Law and Practice, and part authors the leading loose-leaf service Commercial & International Arbitration (all published by Thomson Reuters). He has been, for many years, a popular presenter of CPD seminars.
Katja J Levy
Katja Levy provides specialist advice in relation to all commercial, corporate and operational matters, with a focus on restructuring and insolvency, and major and complex or difficult projects. She also has expertise in dispute resolution in banking, construction, property, regulatory, cyber security, and information technology and services. Katja has a detailed understanding of best practices in governance and risk management as well as the current issues facing corporations and the role and responsibilities of company directors. With experience as an independent barrister, Katja's practice includes a broad range of work, including as counsel in complex trials and appeals across multiple jurisdictions.
Dirk Feinauer
Dirk Feinauer heads up Feinauer Commercial Lawyers, a law corporation based in Perth, Western Australia and is one of the most experienced German speaking lawyers practicing in Australia. Dirk graduated from the Australian National University, Canberra with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He is admitted to law practice in the Federal Court and High Court of Australia and the Supreme Courts of Western Australia and New South Wales. Dirk regularly speaks on a range of topics in Australia and across the world. He has written various articles and other publications. Dirk practices in complex corporate and commercial matters and conducts litigation in Superior and the Federal Courts including cross border disputes.
Peter Yeldham
Peter is a Partner in the Dispute Resolution group in the Sydney office of King & Wood Mallesons, with expertise in insurance advice and disputes, commercial real estate disputes, and general commercial litigation. In his insurance practice, Peter provides policy response advice and claims support (including litigation, if required) in relation to a range of insurance claims (including claims made under Professional Indemnity, Directors & Officers, Statutory Liability, W&I, cyber, Contract Works insurance, and Industrial Special Risks policies). The bulk of Peter’s experience has been in the professional indemnity space, often advising other professional services firms.
Karmen Gallegos
Karmen is a Senior Associate in the Dispute Resolution Group in the Sydney office of King & Wood Mallesons. Karmen regularly acts in a range of commercial disputes in the Supreme and Federal Courts, particularly those involving the building and construction and energy and resources industries. Karmen also has a vast array of experience in domestic arbitration, as well as construction specific disputes regarding the security of payment regime and contractual dispute mechanisms, including expert determination. Karmen deals with various issues including delay and disruption, extensions of time, defect rectification, as well as assisting with day to day administration of live projects for various clients.