What is the test for assessing damages for breach of contract?
Ontario, Canada
The following excerpt is from Burns v Sharan Sohi et al., 2012 ONSC 2414 (CanLII):
It is settled law that damages for breach of contract should put the plaintiff in the position he would have been in had the contract been performed. The classic statement of the principle regarding assessment of damages for breach of contract was set out in Hadley v. Baxendale (1854), 9 Ex. Ch. 341, at 354: Where two parties have made a contract which one of them has broken, the damages which the other party ought to receive in respect of such breach of contract should be such as may fairly and reasonably be considered either arising naturally, i.e., according to the usual course of things, from such breach of contract itself, or such as may reasonably be supposed to have been in contemplation of both parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it.
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