Hi I’m Reed Bloodworth managing partner of Bloodworth Law in Orlando Florida.
At Bloodworth Law we represent plaintiffs and defendants in many types of civil litigation.
At Bloodworth Law we travel throughout the I-4 corridor.
This means we come to our clients and we take care of cases in courts close to our clients.
Today wanted to address breaches of contract defense system breaches of contract.
So some of the first issues to address is well what’s a contract?
A contract is a fairly simple instrument.
It requires an offer.
It requires acceptance and it requires consideration which is the item or thing that is bargained
for between the parties.
Next a breach of contract what’s that mean?
Well a breach of contract means there was one a valid contract two that it was breached
by one of the parties meaning one of the parties didn’t fully perform his or her duties pursuant
to the contract and three as a result of that that party suffered damages.
Typically these damages are monetary in nature.
So what are defenses to a breach of contract?
Well in Florida there are many types of defenses to breach of contract.
I’m going to address several of them in this video.
Please understand there are many many potential defenses to breach of contract claim.
Here’s some of the most common ones.
First the statute of limitations.
Statute of limitations means a party has a certain amount of time to file a lawsuit within
the State of Florida.
For a breach of contract that statute of limitation is either five or four years.
If there’s a written contract the parties seeking to enforce their claim has five years
to bring that cause of action.
If it’s a verbal contract they only have four years.
If the party does not file a lawsuit within the described time period then they’ve lost
the ability to enforce that contract.
The second defense is was the contract illegal?
In Florida you cannot contract to do an illegal act.
Occasionally people will contract for certain things turn out to be illegal.
Therefore if a party does not fully perform under that contract it turns out that’s
okay because it’s a valid defense that the contract was illegal.
The next very common defense is fraudulent inducement.
Fraudulent inducement means that during the course of negotiations one party was not honest
with the other party and they said things perhaps things that were false that were lies
in order to get the order party to enter into the contract with them.
If this happened that is a valid defense to a breach of contract case.
It’s called fraudulent inducement.
Next a very very common defense for breach of contract is the statute of frauds.
The statute of frauds is a doctrine that states certain contracts must be in writing and if
these types of contracts are not in writing they’re unenforceable.
Some of the contracts that have to be in writing include contracts pertaining to real estate
contracts whose performance will take longer than one year contracts that are for above
a certain amount of money and contracts that have to be executed in a certain way.
So those are some of the common statute of fraud defenses that can be asserted.
The next type of defense involves mistake.
You have unilateral mistakes and mutual mistakes.
What this means is a contract cannot be breached if the parties that entered into the contract
did not understand the terms to the contract.
This can take place unilateral meaning one of the parties to the contract did not understand
or mutual meaning both sides to the contract did not understand the terms.
Finally a very common defense in Florida is impossibility.
Impossibility of performance means that due to completely unforeseen circumstances such
as a death or incapacity or perhaps a property destruction the contract cannot be completed.
This is a valid defense to a breach of contract action.
As I stated there are many other defenses to breach of contract actions but these are
some of the most common ones.
I hope that this video was helpful.
I hope the explanations were helpful.
Again my name’s Reed Bloodworth the managing partner at Bloodworth Law.
Give me a call.
Let’s talk about what happened to you.