Tractebel Energy Marketing, Inc. v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• stating that impracticability excuses a party’s breach when contract itself does not provide “escape clause” and doctrine’s other requirements are satisfied
• a party must explain why certain actions were not reasonable rather than performing an unreasonable act to show impracticability
• “Generally, impracticability excuses a party’s breach when the contract itself doesn’t provide an escape clause.”
• “Because courts cannot simply rewrite the parties’ contract, the excuse is limited to circumstances in which both parties held a basic (though unstated) assumption about the contract that proves untrue.”
• party must explain why possible action to surmount new obstacle was unreasonable

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).