Contract Impracticability and Frustration Doctrines

Contract Impracticability and Frustration Doctrines groups the excuse-from-performance doctrines recognized in the common law of contracts, following the doctrine of impracticability, which excuses performance of a contractual duty where that duty has become unfeasibly difficult or expensive for the party who was to perform it. Impracticability is closely related to, yet distinct from, the doctrine of impossibility: both are triggered by the occurrence of a condition that prevents a party from fulfilling the contract as originally intended, but impossibility excuses performance only where the contractual duty cannot physically be performed at all, while impracticability applies where performance remains physically possible but has become extremely burdensome for the performing party. This node gathers the atlas's own entities illustrating this same family of performance-excusing doctrines, including the closely related doctrine of frustration of purpose, under one authoritative taxonomic class rather than leaving each doctrine as an isolated, unclassified entity.