Delhi School of law is an institute solely dedicated to providing law coaching for CLAT, law entrance and LLB semesters by highly experienced faculty.
04/09/2023
Advocate Acting As Real Estate Agent & Selling Client's Property Amounts To Misconduct : Supreme Court Upholds BCI Penalty The Supreme Court recently upheld a decision of the Bar Council of India to suspend an advocate for 5 years for gross professional misconduct after it was revealed that he had acquired a General...
A Contract, as per Section 2(h) of the Indian Contracts Act, 1872 ('ICA'), is said to be an agreement enforceable by law. It creates an obligation upon both / all parties to perform their respective set of promises under such an agreement.
However, it happens invariably that either / both / all of the parties, due to some or the other reason fail or refuse to perform their contractual obligations within the stipulated period of time – such a failure / refusal is considered a breach of a contract.
Under the Indian Contract Act, the party suffering loss due to breach of contractual obligations is entitled to payment of damages. These damages can be primarily categorized into two parts: liquidated and unliquidated damages.
a. Liquidated Damages refer to the amount laid down in the contract which is required to be paid in case of a breach by both parties. In other words, this amount is fixed in advance before entering into a contract which helps in avoiding any confusion or dispute in case of contractual breach.
b. Unliquidated damages refer to the amount which is fixed by the Court or any other appropriate authority, after assessing the breach of contract. These are not fixed by the parties and are rather decided by the Court or other appropriate authorities.
(Sections 73 & 74 of the Indian Contract Act)
The Doctrine of Promissory Estoppel
The doctrine of promissory estoppel is an equitable doctrine evolved by equity to prevent injustice. The doctrine estops the promisor to retract from his promise in case while acting on the promise of the promisor, the promisee alters his/ her position. It is based upon principles of justice, fair play, and good conscience. The doctrine is different from the rule of estoppel spelled out in Section 115 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 as said Section talks about the representation made as to the existing facts whereas the promissory estoppel deals with the future promises. The doctrine is neither in the realm of contract nor in the realm estoppel.
The Doctrine of Promissory Estoppel works on the principle of equity, fairness and moral conscience.
Capacity to Contract under the Indian Contract Act Section 10 of the Act requires that the parties must be competent to contract. Section 11 of the Act says that every person who is of the age of majority and is of sound mind is competent to contract. Thus minors and persons of unsound mind are incompetent to contract according to the Act. In India the age of majority is 18 years.
The decision in the Mohiri Bibi case settled that if a minor enters into an agreement, it would absolutely void as a minor cannot make a promise enforceable by law.
However, it is important to note that the parents or guardian of a minor can contract on behalf of the minor subject to certain exceptions.
Mr. Amit an engineering graduate was working in an IT company and earning a hefty amount of salary so much so that he was confused as to what to do with it, one day he decides to invest it but having no knowledge about investing he was clueless as where to invest, so he calls up his investment banker friend Mr. Vijay working at Axis Asset Management to get some advice on where to invest. Mr. Vijay assessed Amit’s financials and suggested that he should invest in equity mutual fund and also provided that the fund he managed that was the Axis Equity Bluechip Fund gave the best returns for last five years, Amit convinced by this decides to invest in the Axis Fund and put Rs. 10 lakhs in it. Unfortunately due to recession Mr. Amit suffered huge losses, aggrieved by this he file a suit against Axis Asset Management for compensation and claimed that he entered the contract in undue influence. Decide:
(a) Mr. Amit will succeed in the suit as Mr. Vijay being his friend had a position of trust thus exerting undue influence.
(b) Mr. Amit will succeed in the suit as Mr. Vijay having the knowledge that Amit was eager to invest exploited that need.
(c) Mr. Amit will not succeed in the suit as he himself agreed to the terms of contract.
(d) Mr. Amit will not succeed in the suit as there was no unfair advantage to Mr. Vijay and thus no undue influence.
Choose the right answer and comment.
28/08/2023
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25/08/2023
The UG-CLAT 2024 would focus on evaluating the comprehension and reasoning skills and abilities of candidates. Overall, it is designed to be a test of aptitude and skills that are necessary for a legal education rather than prior knowledge, though prior knowledge occasionally may be useful to respond to questions in the Current Affairs including General Knowledge section.
The UG-CLAT 2024 shall be a 2-hour test, with 120 multiple-choice questions carrying 1 mark each. There shall be negative marking of 0.25 marks for every wrong answer. These questions would be divided across the following 5 subjects:
English Language
Current Affairs, including General Knowledge
Legal Reasoning
Logical Reasoning
Quantitative Techniques
12/05/2023
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