The deal was clear. Their memory isn't. Speak to Kestrel.
Contract disputes are decided by the words on the page and the record of what each side did, in that order. Before any argument, the contract needs reading for the clauses people forget: notice requirements, time limits, dispute resolution steps, caps on liability. Then the choice is sequenced: negotiate from the strongest reading, mediate if useful, litigate if it pays.
English law holds businesses to their bargains. The court's first question is what the written terms say, read as a whole; arguments about what everyone really meant rarely beat the document. That cuts both ways: clauses you signed but never read still bind you, and the same is true of them.
Contracts often prescribe how disputes must start: written notice within a set time, to a set address, sometimes escalation meetings or mediation before any claim. Miss a contractual notice requirement and a good claim can fail on procedure, so the boring clauses get read first.
Remedies run from damages, which put you where proper performance would have, to termination for serious breach, to orders compelling performance in rare cases. The innocent party must also mitigate: you cannot sit back and let losses grow. What you do in the first weeks shapes the whole case.
Guide edition: August 2026. General information for England and Wales. Current law and your particular facts require assessment before action.
Notice clauses, termination rights, liability caps, dispute resolution steps, governing law. The machine flags them; a lawyer reads them in context.
A chronology with the documents attached: what was promised, what was delivered, what was said when it slipped. Contemporaneous emails outweigh recollections.
A letter that states the breach, the remedy sought and the deadline, pitched to resolve rather than inflame. Most commercial disputes settle at or soon after this point.
Mediation where a relationship is worth saving; a claim where it is not or the deadline passes. Each step priced against the recovery.
Tell Kestrel what happened. The AI legal assistant gathers the facts and prepares a summary for you to check. Request lawyer review from your Legal Centre.
Speak to Kestrel nowSix years from breach for most contract claims, but contractual notice periods can be far shorter, sometimes days or weeks. The contract's own clock beats the statutory one.
This guide concerns Commercial contracts. It forms part of our reference library. Kestrel is preparing for SRA authorisation. See practice details for the proposed service and current availability.
Dangerous. Only a sufficiently serious breach lets you treat the contract as ended, and getting it wrong makes you the party in repudiation. Take a view before you down tools.
Contracts formed by conduct and email are still contracts. If both sides performed as though terms applied, a court will usually find them. Which version applies is where the battle of forms lives.
Often, but caps and exclusions are construed narrowly and some losses may fall outside them. It needs reading, not assuming.
Statistically no: most commercial disputes settle. The purpose of preparing as if for court is to make settlement arrive sooner and on better terms.
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