Legal Writing Analysis and Redrafting

a. Weaknesses in the Passage

The provided passage contains several weaknesses that undermine its effectiveness as a piece of formal legal writing. Five key weaknesses are identified and explained below.

1. Poor Structure and Sentence Length. The passage is composed of two extremely long and convoluted sentences. The first sentence alone contains multiple clauses dealing with the parties, the contract's formation, the subject matter, the breach, and the buyer's state of mind. This lack of punctuation and sentence division makes the text difficult to read and comprehend. Effective legal writing uses clear, well-structured sentences of varying lengths to present information logically, a quality this passage lacks.

1. Wordiness and Redundancy. The writing is cluttered with unnecessary words and phrases that add no substantive meaning. Examples include "It is the case that", "in the matter of the contract", "on or about the month of June", and "did not at any point in time". These phrases make the writing sound stilted and unprofessional. Concise language is a hallmark of good legal writing; the author should have stated the facts and arguments directly.

1. Lack of Legal Authority. The passage makes several legal claims without citing any supporting authority. It asserts that "the law is clear that a person who breaches a contract must compensate the other party" and that the buyer is entitled to be put back into her pre-contractual position. While these statements reflect basic contractual principles, they are presented as bare assertions. A legal argument must be substantiated with references to relevant case law (e.g., Robinson v Harman (1848)) and/or legislation to be credible.

1. Informal Tone and Subjective Language. The tone of the passage is too informal for legal analysis. Phrases such as "a very serious one at that" and referring to the buyer's "view that she is entitled to a remedy" are subjective and conversational. Legal writing should be objective and analytical. Instead of stating a party's 'view', the writer should state the legal position and analyse whether the facts support it.

1. Disorganised Legal Analysis. The argument is poorly organised. It presents a jumbled list of potential remedies—"recover damages and also can terminate the contract and also she may be able to get her money back"—without explaining the legal basis for each or the relationship between them. A structured analysis would first establish the breach, then consider the right to terminate based on the type of term breached, and finally assess the different types of available damages according to established legal principles like remoteness and mitigation.

b. Rewritten Passage

Analysis of Breach and Remedies in Asare v Boateng

This analysis concerns a contract formed in or around June of the previous year between Madam Asare (the buyer), a building contractor, and Mr Boateng (the seller). The seller breached the contract by failing to deliver 200 bags of cement on the agreed-upon date, despite having received payment in full. This constitutes a fundamental breach of contract, entitling the buyer to several remedies.

Termination of the Contract

The seller’s failure to deliver the goods on the specified date is a clear breach of a term of the contract. The buyer’s right to terminate the contract depends on whether the delivery time was a ‘condition’ of the contract. In commercial agreements, a stipulated time for performance is often treated as a condition, meaning time is ‘of the essence’ (Bunge Corporation v Tradax Export SA [1981]). Given that the buyer is a building contractor and had repeatedly reminded the seller of the delivery date, it is highly arguable that the time of delivery was a condition. The breach of this condition entitles the buyer to terminate the contract and to be discharged from any further obligations under it. Upon termination for a total failure of consideration (as no goods were delivered), the buyer is entitled to the return of the full purchase price she paid.

Claim for Damages

In addition to termination and restitution of the price paid, the buyer may claim damages. The purpose of contractual damages is to place the innocent party in the position they would have been in had the contract been performed (Robinson v Harman (1848)). Madam Asare can likely claim for two heads of loss:

1. Cost of Cure: The buyer was forced to purchase replacement cement from another supplier at a "much higher price." This additional expense is a direct loss flowing from the breach and is recoverable. The measure of damages here would be the difference between the contract price and the market price paid for the substitute goods.

1. Consequential Loss: The buyer had to pay workers for three months while the project was delayed. The recoverability of this consequential loss depends on the rules of remoteness set out in Hadley v Baxendale (1854). The loss must have been something that was in the reasonable contemplation of the parties at the time of contracting as a probable result of the breach. As the seller knew the buyer was a building contractor, it is likely that the loss arising from paying an idle workforce during a delay caused by non-delivery of essential materials would be considered foreseeable and therefore recoverable.

References

Bunge Corporation v Tradax Export SA [1981] 1 WLR 711

Hadley v Baxendale (1854) 9 Exch 341

Robinson v Harman (1848) 1 Exch 850