What are the damages for damages for breach of contract?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Paddon v. Phillips Barratt Kaiser Engr. Ltd., 1987 CanLII 2438 (BC SC):

I have not been able to find, nor has counsel been able to direct me to, any case that is directly on the point that I need to decide here. In my view, I should turn to fundamental principles applicable to breach of contract cases. One of the most fundamental is that stated as the rule in Hadley v. Boxendale (1854), 9 Ex. 341 at 354, 156 E.R. 145 at 151, as follows: …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 the contemplation of both parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it. Now, if the special circumstances under which the contract was actually made were communicated by the plaintiffs to the defendants, and thus known to both parties, the damages resulting from the breach of such a contract, which they would reasonably contemplate, would be the amount of injury which would ordinarily follow from a breach of contract under these special circumstances so known and communicated. But, on the other hand, if these special circumstances were wholly unknown to the party breaking the contract, he, at the most, could only be supposed to have had in his contemplation the amount of injury which would arise generally, and in the great multitude of cases not affected by any special circumstances, from such a breach of contract.

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