The Project Delay Suit: The Court Route and Its Construction
When a delayed project can no longer be resolved by negotiation, the remaining route is the court, and the strength of the suit depends on its construction. The Civil Code assembles a full ladder for a delay suit: the setting of an additional period and refusal, the claim of damages, the parties’ rights of termination, interest, and limitation. Each step requires its own conditions, and skipping steps makes the suit untenable.
The structure of the suit is assembled according to this ladder: first the breach and its character are fixed; then the documentation of the additional period or warning is presented; then the damage, actual loss and lost income; and finally the formulation of the claim: performance, damages, interest or the consequences of refusal. The evidence block is built by the same logic: the schedule and its amendments, the letters on the additional period or warning, the acts of the actual volume of performance and the damage calculations must be linked to one another consistently. The court checks how far each claim corresponds to this chain, and a broken chain weakens the whole suit.
The Additional Period and Refusal of the Contract
The first step of the suit is Article 405 of the Civil Code: where one party to a contract breaches an obligation arising from a bilateral contract, the other party may refuse the contract after the fruitless expiry of an additional period determined by it for the performance of the obligation. Where, from the character of the breach, an additional period does not apply, a warning is equated to the determination of an additional period. Where the obligation is breached only in part, the creditor may refuse the contract only if performance of the remaining part has lost its interest for it. The same article provides that an additional period or warning is not necessary where it is evident that it will have no result, where the creditor made continuation of the relationship conditional on timely performance, or where, on special grounds and considering the interests of both parties, immediate termination of the contract is justified. Refusal is inadmissible where the breach is insignificant, where the creditor itself is responsible for the breach, or where the claim is opposed by a counter-performance which the debtor has already submitted or will submit immediately.