A new paper examines two damages approaches generally used in a disputed matter: reliance damages and expectation damages. The paper (available if you click here) also reviews court decisions in Canada that provide guidance in the selection of the appropriate damages approach. The paper explains that, in the context of breach of contract disputes, the goal of expectation damages is to put the innocent party in the same position as if the contract had been performed. If it is not possible to calculate what the profits would have been if a contract had been performed, the reliance damages approach can be used. The premise of this approach is to put the plaintiff in the position he or she would have been in had the contract never been made. The paper’s authors are Ivy Tse and Eric Mah, who are both with Secretariat in Toronto. They both have the CBV designation from the CBV Institute, Canada’s valuation professional organization (VPO).
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