vagabond

Some airlines require new employees to sign a Training Contract. A contract is an agreement between two parties, and it usually contains many boilerplate terms. This thread is about some clauses found in most contracts that describe how one party may fail to perform, but still not be liable, or in the case of hardship, cause a renegotiation of the contract.

Force majeure essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as war, strike, riot, crime, act of nature (e.g., flooding, earthquake, volcano), prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.

Hardship clause is intended to cover cases in which unforeseen events occur that fundamentally alter the equilibrium of a contract resulting in an excessive burden being placed on one of the parties involved. Parties must perform their contractual obligations even if events have caused performance to be more onerous than would reasonably have been anticipated at the time of the conclusion of the contract. However, where continued performance has become excessively burdensome due to an event beyond a party’s reasonable control which it could not reasonably have been expected to have taken into account, the clause can obligate the parties to negotiate alternative contractual terms which reasonably allow for the consequences of the event.

Impossibility is usually a defense in that the law cannot compel an individual to perform an impossible action, nor can it punish an individual for failure to perform an impossibility. An example might be the paying of taxes. An insolvent or indigent person with no valuable assets cannot be forced to pay back taxes he or she may owe, and cannot be punished for such failure.

An escape clause is any clause, term or condition in a contract that allows a party to that contract to avoid having to perform the contract.