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Termination Clause Trumps Cost-Sharing

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 01.23.06

The Federal Circuit in Jacobs Eng'g Group, Inc. v. U.S. (Jan. 19, 2006) had before it the interesting scenario of the government terminating a contract with an 80/20 cost share and the contractor insisting that it should get "all" its costs under the termination for convenience clause, not just 80% per the cost share. The court agreed, because the cost share had not been specifically incorporated in the termination clause and the termination had deprived the contractor of his compensating benefit for taking the cost share in the first place, patent rights in the finished work.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 08.13.26

Supreme Court Confirms Contractual Loss of Bargain Without Repudiatory Breach

English law has long treated the choice between terminating for repudiatory breach and exercising a contractual termination right as consequential. Under the Financings[1] causation principle, a party exercising a contractual right for a non-repudiatory breach could recover losses accrued to the date of termination — but nothing more. Loss of bargain was out of reach unless the breach went to the root of the contract. A practical workaround, confirmed in Lombard,[2] was to designate the relevant obligation as a condition, elevating any breach to repudiatory status, but that device carries significant strategic risk if the termination is later found to have been wrongful....