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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 281', '§ 2', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', 'art. 80', '§ 438', 'Art. 74', '§ 427', '§ 282', '§ 459', '§ 14', '§ 281', '§ 285', '§ 2', '§ 5', '§ 348', '§ 7', '§ 272']

Go to Database Directory || Go to Bibliography Published in Galston & Smit ed., International Sales: The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Matthew Bender (1984), Ch. 5, pages 5-1 to 5-24. Reproduction authorized by Juris Publishing.
Impracticability and Impossibility in the
U.N. Convention on Contracts for the
§ 5.01 Criticism of Article 79 § 5.02 The Definition in Paragraph (1) [1] The Elements [2] The Special Problems of Defects [3] Conclusion § 5.03 The Incompleteness of the Provision [1] Omission of Frustration [2] Inadequacy of the System of Remedies § 5.04 The Innovation in Paragraph (2) § 5.05 Conclusion
§ 5.01 Criticism of Article 79
If a critic were drawing up a list of the unsatisfactory
provisions in the Convention, he would, I fear, include article
79.[1] My purpose in this paper is to consider how far [page 5-1] the critic (and I am assuming that he is a common laywer) would
He would have to concede, to begin with, that a great deal of
time and effort was put into the article. A substantial part of two
two-week sessions of the Working Group, supported by written
submissions, was devoted to the subject,[2] followed by a long
discussion by UNCITRAL itself [3] and finally by a debate at
Vienna spread intermittently over four sessions of the First
Committee.[4] The critic would also have to concede that there are,
by comparison with the Uniform Law on International Sales of
1964 (ULIS), improvements in detail and a greater internal
consistency.[5] Neither of these concessions, however, would do much
to mitigate his main criticism, which would, I think, fall under two
heads: (I) [infra § 5.02] He would say that the attempt in paragraph (1)
to define the circumstances in which the exemption will apply has
yielded a formula which is so vague that there are bound to be
differences of interpretation in different jurisdictions and the prime
purpose of any uniform law will in consequence be defeated. (II)
[infra § 5.03] His second criticism would be that the provision is
incomplete, a criticism which would itself fall into two related parts:
(1) The provision is lopsided in that it deals with impossibility or
impracticability, but not with frustration of purpose; (2) Its system of
remedies is inadequate.
A consideration of these two (or three) criticisms will enable us to
examine the merits and demerits of paragraphs (1), (3) and (5) of the
article. I shall then have a little to say [page 5-2] on (III) [infra § 5.04] paragraph (2), which breaks new ground by comparison with ULIS. Paragraph (4) needs, I think, no comment. [page 5-3]
§ 5.02 The Definition in Paragraph (1)
There are three things which the party claiming exemption has to
prove. (i) The non-performance must be "due to an impediment"; (ii)
the impediment must have been "beyond his control"; (iii) it must be
one which he could not reasonably have been expected to take into
account when the contract was made and which (or the consequences
of which) he could not reasonably have been expected to avoid or
overcome. This is obviously not the language of the common law; it
echoes in fact that of French law [6] and the systems derived from it,
which speak in terms of force majeure or the like as a justification or
excuse for non-performance; and force majeure is characterized as
unforeseeable, insurmountable, irresistible. But the common lawyer
should have no difficulty in working with this concept. By comparison
with ULIS,[7] which adopts the same approach, the article does indeed
dispense with the criterion of the intention of the parties and replaces
the question whether the impediment was foreseeable by the question
whether it was one which the non-performing party should have taken
into account, but this is all in keeping with current thinking in the
common law.[8] The critic should have nothing therefore to
complain about here. He is more likely to say that the weak element
of the three is the first: the requirement that the non-performance be
"due to an impediment." Both "due to" and "impediment" are elastic words, which may embrace much or little. They provide, it can be [page 5-4] said, no guidance to the courts which will have to interpret the
Elastic words are obviously more undesirable in an international enactment than in a national one. A national enactment
is drafted against a background of one system of law and the
draftsman can fairly confidently predict how his text will be
understood by the courts, particularly if he uses words which
have already acquired a patina of legal meaning. An international
enactment, on the other hand, has no such background or
context. Or rather it has as many backgrounds as there are legal
systems within which it may be applied. The objection to elastic
words like "due to an impediment" is therefore that they will be
read in the context of each system's view of the limits within
which an excuse of this kind should be admitted.
And it is certain that there are differences of attitude and
emphasis between different systems.[9] French law is very strict
in the matter of frustration or imprévision, whereas German and
Swiss law probably stand at the other extreme, with the
common law systems in the middle. But even within a single
system there are differences between the formulation of the law
and its application. Thus an English lawyer coming uninstructed
to § 2-615 of the Uniform Commercial Code or to chapter 11
of the Restatement (Second) of [page 5-5] Contracts with their use of unfamiliar, and to him alarmingly elastic,
words like "impracticable" or "occurrence of contingency" or
"performance [which] would be materially more burdensome," is
surprised to find how little the actual decisions diverge from what he
would have expected at home. Again, French law is in its verbal
formulation very strict in the matter of force majeure. The Cour de
cassation insists that performance must be impossible, but individual
decisions are sometimes more lenient than this would suggest [10] -- certainly more lenient than would be countenanced in England.
The truth is that every system acquires its familiar phrases, which
serve to identify the kinds of situation in which the courts will act.
What predictability of meaning these phrases have derives from their
past application or discussion in the literature, rather than from any
intrinsic meaning of their own. I have already referred to the terms
used by the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement (Second). English
law has of course nothing to correspond to these, but English judges
(thinking in terms of frustration rather than of impossibility or
impracticability) often use formulae declaring that the difference
between the performance originally promised and the performance
now expected must be one of kind as opposed to simply of degree, or must be a radical difference,[11] just as Comment 4 to UCC § 2-615 [page 5-6] speaks of an alteration in "the essential nature of the performance."
For practical purposes; however, such terms are no more helpful than
those in article 79. German law, as befits a system with great powers
of abstraction, has been particularly fertile in the creation of general
theories in this area, but one is inclined to agree with Zweigert and
Kötz [12] that the only use of such general theories is "to give the courts
phrases in which to dress up the really material considerations."
But should one not attempt to indicate to some extent what those
material considerations are? We should probably all agree that what
a court is doing when it applies a provision such as article 79 is to
determine which party ought to bear the risk of the occurrence which
has given rise to the dispute.[13] And indeed it was suggested at an early
stage in the drafting of the Convention [14] that the article should
be expressed in terms of risk allocation, but the general view was [15]
that this was an analysis of the result to be achieved rather than a tool
with which the courts could achieve that result. In the context of a
single system, in which the courts share a common set of pre-suppositions about policy, it might perhaps be sufficient to say that
a court should decide in whose sphere of risk the occurrence lay,
without indicating what matters the court should take into account in
making that decision, but in an international [page 5-7] context such a formula merely shifts the uncertainty. This
becomes obvious if one considers the economic approach to
risk allocation, which finds, I think, a good deal of current favor
in this country.[16] I am no economist, but I cannot imagine that
the economic doctrines of a free enterprise, capitalist economy
would find an exact echo within a state-trading, socialist system.
The purpose of the law, in a situation in which ex hypothesi
the parties have expressed no intention, should be (as a very
useful paper by the Ontario Law Reform [page 5-8] Commission [17] puts it) to give effect to reasonable expectations. And in doing so it must necessarily take account of the
terms of the contract, the whole context in which it was made
and current trade practices in the areas concerned. This, I take
it, is what an American court is doing when, in applying § 2-615
of the UCC (or § 281 of Restatement (Second)) it asks itself
whether the non-occurrence of the contingency or event with
which it is concerned "was a basic assumption on which the
contract was made." And this, one hopes, is what a court
applying article 79 of the Convention will do when it asks
whether the "impediment beyond his control" was one which
the party "could not reasonably be expected to have taken ... into account ... or to have avoided or overcome ... ." Here the
need to decide what is a "reasonable expectation" is indeed
expressly stated. And in arriving at its decision a court is
required by the Convention to have regard "to the need to
promote uniformity" in the application of the Convention (article
7) and to give effect to the usages of the particular trade
concerned, within the limits laid down in article 9. As Professor
Honnold [18] says in his commentary on article 79, it would be reasonable to have regard to established contractual patterns and to other evidence such as the General Conditions worked out by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.
If you have followed me so far, you will see that the
conclusion to which I am coming is that the important elements
in paragraph (1) are the test of reasonable expectation and the
requirement that the impediment be beyond the party's contro1.
The words "due to an impediment" are indeed vague, but this
degree of vagueness is unavoidably present in any such
formula. In a very recent article in the [page 5-9] American Journal of Comparative Law [19] Professor Eörsi makes
some wise and witty observations on the futility of attempting to
define broad concepts. He is referring to the definition of fundamental
breach in article 25 of the Convention, but what he says is equally
applicable to our paragraph (1). He observes, if I may crudely
paraphrase his argument, that there are always some who hope that by
multiplying words they may succeed in defining the indefinable and
others, like himself, who know that this is futile. The ebb and flow
of the battle is charted by the number of words used in the definition
and it is a matter of chance where the battleline stands when final
agreement is reached. If one applies what I may call the Eörsi test to
our paragraph (1), one finds that it is at least better than its
predecessors. It used 62 words, against 72 in the 1978 text and 89 in
[2] The Special Problem of Defects
I have just said that the word "impediment" is unavoidably vague, and
yet paradoxically its choice was the result of much discussion in the
Working Group, arising out of a widely shared desire to ensure that
article 79 could not be used by a seller to escape his liability for
defective performance, and in particular defects of quality, by pleading
that they were beyond his control and that he could not have been
expected to take them into account. This possibility might arise if, for
example, in the state of technical knowledge as it was when the
contract was made, the defect could not have been detected.
The question whether the exemption should apply in such a case was
a subject of controversy at the Hague Conference in 1964,[20] some civil law states, and in particular the Federal [page 5-10] Republic of Germany, being concerned that it should do so. The issue
turned eventually on the choice between the word "obstacle" and the
word "circumstances." Those who wished to ensure that the paragraph
could not apply to the delivery of non-conforming goods argued for
"obstacle"; for that word, it was thought, suggested an event which was
both subsequent to the conclusion of the contract and external to the
seller and the goods, whereas a defect must be internal and must (if
the seller is to be responsible for it) have existed when the contract
was made (or at least when the risk passed). "Circumstances," on the
other hand, could more easily be understood as embracing the
existence of defects. The verdict in 1964 went in favor of
"circumstances," but the question was revived in the discussions of the UNCITRAL Working Group [21] and the word "impediment" was
adopted as denoting, like "obstacle," an external barrier to
performance, rather than an aspect of that performance; and no attempt was made at subsequent stages of the drafting of the
article to go back on this choice. The intention of the draftsmen is therefore clear enough, but it has been
said that there is disagreement among commentators. Thus Professor
Huber [22] in his examination of the 1978 text (which, as far as this
question is concerned, is identical with the final text) found that the
changes from "circumstances" in the ULIS text to "impediment,"
though the difference between the two had been the subject of so
much argument, was without significance. A defect present in the
goods at the time of the contract could, in Professor Huber's view, be
an impediment to the performance of the seller's obligation to deliver
conforming goods (article 35). Professor Schlechtriem does not
expressly deal with the question in his valuable commentary on the
Convention, but I have the [page 5-11] impression that he would agree with Professor Huber.[23] Of course it comes. as something of a surprise to the common
lawyer that anyone should think that impracticability could ever be an
excuse for breach of what he would call the implied warranty of
merchantability. It is worth inquiring briefly why this is so, since we
shall find once again that the interpretations adopted by Professor
Huber on the one hand and on the other hand by a common lawyer
reflect the pre-suppositions with which each approaches the text. The
fundamental reason for the difference of approach is that the common
lawyer starts from strict liability whereas the civil lawyer, and
especially the German lawyer, starts from fault liability.[24] The result
of this is that although an attempt to express article 79 in terms
of fault was fairly early abandoned,[25] a German lawyer may still, I
think, see it as an expression of strict liability only to the extent that
the burden of proof of fault is reversed,[26] the party in breach [page 5-12] being required to prove the absence of fault, as with the French obligation de résultat, whereas the common lawyer sees it as
a statement of objective exonerating circumstances. In most
cases this difference of approach is of no great consequence,
but in the case of liability for defects its practical importance
becomes apparent. The common lawyer does not, I think, see
a warranty in the traditional sense as a promise of performance
which is capable of becoming impossible or impracticable or of
being frustrated. It is not a promise of a performance, but a
guarantee of a fact and it is of the essence of a guarantee that
impossibility is irrelevant to it.[27] This is equally true, of course,
of the obligation de garantie of French law [28] or the
Gewährleistung of German law.[29] But in German law if the sale
is of generic goods -- as many international sales are -- the presence
of a defect can be seen in the alternative either as giving rise to
a claim on the guarantee, or as a defective performance of the
contract and therefore governed by the principle of fault.[30] If
one looks at the Convention from this point of view one finds
that the provision on defects in the goods (article 35) is indeed
expressed as an aspect of the obligation to perform: "The seller must deliver goods which are of the quantity, quality and description required by the contract ... ." There is no talk of warranties or guarantees.
There is therefore no ground for the common lawyer's initial
surprise at the idea of applying article 79 to the matter of
defects. The only question is whether the requirement of an
"impediment" excludes it. Even leaving aside the legislative
history, I find it less easy than Professor Huber does to answer
this question in the negative. To take the case of a defect which
in the state of technical knowledge existing at the time of the
contract was not discoverable, the seller has [page 5-13] presumably to say that his failure to perform his obligation of delivering goods of the quality required is due to an
impediment consisting in his ignorance of the defect (an
ignorance which was beyond his control, etc. because of the
state of technical knowledge). But if the seller's state of mind
can constitute an impediment, article 79 is simply a statement of
fault liability with the burden of proof reversed. Professor Huber
indeed treats the defect itself as the impediment. This involves
saying that the seller cannot deliver conforming goods because
of an impediment consisting in their not being conforming. In
other words the seller is not liable for defects in the goods if he can show that the defects were beyond his control, etc.
In sum, my answer to our hypothetical critic is a confession and
Yes, the wording of the paragraph is vague or imprecise, but it is in
the nature of definitions of this kind to be imprecise. The important
thing is that national courts should see the article in the context of the
Convention as a whole and of the practices of international trade. As
far as "impediment" is concerned, if the paragraph is read in the
context of the strict liability approach of the Convention as a whole
and in the light of the legislative history, I submit that the word must
indicate a barrier to performance which is external to the party and the
thing concerned. Beyond this the main burden of the paragraph must
be borne by the requirement that the impediment be beyond his
control and especially by what I have called the test of reasonable
expectation. The more sophisticated and widespread international
commerce becomes, the more difficult it is to say that a party could
not reasonably have been expected to take an impediment into
account.[31] This is reflected in the [page 5-14] paucity of successful cases under § 2-615 of the Uniform Commercial Code.[32] [page 5-15] § 5.03 The Incompleteness of the Provision
The second objection of our hypothetical critic is that article
79 is incomplete. It does not deal with all the questions which
arise out of the situation with which it purports to deal. This
criticism itself falls into two parts.
[1] Omission of Frustration
The American common law has the merit, by comparison
with the common law of England and the Commonwealth, of
keeping a clear distinction between impossibility or
impracticability of performance [33] and frustration of purpose.[34] Article 79 provides for the former, but not for the latter.[35]
This can be illustrated by a hypothetical case which I
borrow from Professor Honnold's unpublished teaching
materials on this subject. In January 1981 Seller agrees to
manufacture and supply equipment to Buyer's specification at a price specified, delivery to be made by June 1, 1981. Both
parties understand that the equipment can only be produced at
Seller's factory at X. On February 1, 1981 this factory is
destroyed by fire. In response to Buyer's inquiry, Seller says
that the factory will be rebuilt by December 1982. If one
assumes that the fire was beyond Seller's control and that it
passes the test of reasonable expectation, Seller is exempted by
paragraph (1) from liability in damages for the delay in
performance. Paragraph (5) preserves Buyer's right to avoid the
contract if the prospective delay constitutes a fundamental
breach; and it will constitute such a breach if, in the words of
article 25, it substantially deprives Buyer of what he is entitled
to expect. But the article provides Seller with no complementary
protection. He has no right to avoid the contract if, owing to
changed circumstances (for example, [page 5-16] enormous cost increases) performance in December 1982
would be radically different from performance in June 1981.
Seller can, of course, argue that the increase in costs is an impediment which exempts him from liability for non-performance in December 1982, but this is unlikely to help him.
In the first place, it is very improbable that a court will allow an
increase in costs by itself to be an impediment [36] (as opposed
to an increase in costs resulting from another impediment, in this
case the fire). And in the second place, as we shall see,[37] Buyer
may in any case be able to claim specific performance.
A proposal was indeed made at Vienna [38] to add to
paragraph (3) a provision that the non-performing party (Seller
in our example) should be permanently exempted if at the end of
the period of temporary exemption circumstances had "so
radically changed that it would be manifestly unreasonable to
hold him liable." The proposal was, however, rejected (as
similar proposals had been rejected at earlier stages in the
drafting of the Convention), apparently out of a reluctance to
embark on the problems of frustration or imprévision.
As a palliative, however, it was agreed [39] to delete the word "only,"
which until then had stood in the text after "has effect." The intention
behind this amendment was to leave open the possibility that the
exemption might continue even after the period during which the
exemption existed. [page 5-17] The paragraph therefore might be read as if it said something
like the following: "The exemption has effect for the period
during which the impediment exists and may have permanent
effect if after the impediment has ceased to exist the
circumstances have so radically changed that it would be
manifestly unreasonable to hold the non-performing party
liable." You may well think that this was the most pregnant
deletion of a single word that was ever made. I certainly cannot
imagine that any court would arrive at this interpretation without
the assistance of the legislative history. It has to be said, however, that even if the non-performing party
persuades the court to adopt this interpretation, he may find
that, though he is indeed exempt from liability in damages, he
may still be compelled to perform. This is our next problem.
[2] Inadequacy of the System of Remedies
Our critic would say that the system of remedies is
inadequate in two ways: (i) paragraph (5) leaves unaffected
every remedy except that of damages, and (ii) a system of
remedies devised for (in common law terms) breach of contract
is inadequate for situations in which there has been no breach.
Paragraph (5) restricts the effect of the exemption created by
the article to the action for damages. In other words, when
paragraph (1) says "A party is not liable ...," it means that he is
not liable in damages.[40] All the other party's remedies are unaffected. The remedies in question [page 5-18] are, in case of non-performance by the seller,[41] to avoid the
contract, to compel performance or, in case of non-conformity,
to reduce the price. Reduction of the price poses no problem
and the right to avoid the contract" is useful, as we have seen,[42]
in enabling the buyer to bring the contract to an end where the
non-performance by the seller is so extensive as to amount to
fundamental breach. It is the right to compel performance that
presents the difficulty. Of course insofar as the impediment
makes performance actually impossible, there can be no specific
enforcement; but if performance is physically possible, but
impracticable within the meaning of paragraph (1), we have the
curious result that the seller is not liable in damages for not
performing and yet can be compelled to perform. In practical
terms, as Professor Schlechtriem points out,[43] this may mean
that national courts may impose penalties for non-compliance
with an order for performance and that those penalties may
exceed the amount of the damages in respect of which the seller
is exempt. The Convention will then in effect be saying to the
seller: "You are exempt from paying damages for your non-performance, but you are required to pay an even larger sum by way of penalty for the same non-performance." It might
well be thought that this paradoxical position resulted from an
oversight by the draftsmen. This was indeed what Professor
Huber thought [44] when he read the 1978 text, but an attempt at Vienna [45] to exclude from paragraph (5) the right to compel performance was defeated. The opposition seemed to rest
partly on the assumption (which comes more easily to a civil
lawyer than to a common lawyer) that if an action for
performance will not lie there can be no obligation [page 5-19] to perform, and therefore that to exclude the action for
performance in the case of a merely temporary impediment
would result in total extinction of the obligation. Another reason,
also deriving, I think, from the assumption that the action for
performance and the obligation to perform are inseparably
linked, was the fear that accessory rights and the right to claim
interest would disappear.
I have been speaking in terms of remedies for the seller's non-performance, since the exemption is more likely to affect the
seller than the buyer, but in principle at least the same problem
can affect the buyer, since, as Professor Honnold points out,[46] the action for the price under the Convention is, contrary to
common law ideas, an action to compel performance.
In sum, in this case I have to admit that our critic's objection
to the Convention is well-founded.
The system of remedies is ill-adapted to the situation dealt
with in article 79. The remedies, of course, are simply the
general remedies for the kind of non-performance which a
common lawyer calls breach of contract, whereas in article 79
we are not dealing with breach. We are concerned with adjusting
the rights of two innocent parties. The problems are those of
balancing benefits received against expenses incurred, problems
which are normally thought of in the context of the law of
restitution,[47] but call for the exercise of a greater degree of
judicial discretion than is found in normal restitutionary
remedies.[48]
Should the Convention have provided special remedies? This
is too complex a question to deal with here. I have [page 5-20] attempted to do so to some extent elsewhere.[49] I confine
myself here to saying that we are faced with what I may call the
problem of the seamless web. No piece of legislation can be
entirely self-contained. The Convention attempts to cut out
from the web of national law one area dealing with the sale of
goods, but beyond the edges of that area there remains national
law, the proper law of the contract. Where the cut should come
is a question about which opinions will differ. The Working
Group was invited to deal with this question, but decided not
to do so.[50] One may regret this decision, but there can be no doubt that to have devised a special system of remedies would
have added considerably to the period of gestation of the
Here too therefore there is room in reply to our critic for a
confession and avoidance. But, to revert to the metaphor of the
web, I could wish that the edges were less frayed. [page 5-21]
§ 5.04 The Innovation in Paragraph (2)
I come finally to paragraph (2), which has no parallel in ULIS
nor, as far as I know (but I have made not very careful inquiry),
in national systems. The purpose of the paragraph is to limit the
extent to which the non-performing party can invoke the failure
of a sub-contractor as an impediment for the purposes of
paragraph (1). Suppose that Seller contracts to make and supply
a machine to Buyer's specification and that he sub-contracts to
X the making of one of the component parts. Suppose further
that X has a high reputation in the trade, but nevertheless fails to
deliver the component in time. It is not sufficient for Seller to
say that X's production process is beyond his control and that
he could not reasonably have been expected to anticipate X's
failure to overcome it. He must also show that X's failure was
beyond X's own control and that X could not have been
expected to anticipate or overcome it.
This is obviously, in principle at least, a considerable
tightening of the limits of the excuse. But there is an area of
uncertainty. I have spoken of a sub-contractor, and this was the
word used in the Working Group's draft. The present
formulation, "a third person whom he has engaged to perform
the whole or a part of the contract," was adopted because the
term "sub-contractor" seemed likely to cause difficulty in some
systems.[51] But the intended meaning was the same.[52] A distinction is drawn between a sub-contractor and a general
supplier. If, to take a variant of the example which we have just
considered, Seller buys in raw materials or ready-made parts
from X, who fails to deliver, he is able to invoke X's failure, provided it is outside Seller's control and
Seller could not reasonably have been expected, etc., even
though it was within X's control and X could reasonably [page 5-22] have been expected, etc. It will not be easy, of course, for
Seller to show that he could not have exercised more care in
choosing or controlling X as his supplier and that he could not
have obtained his supplies in time elsewhere, but there is
undoubtedly a less strict limit on Seller's exemption. The
difference between a sub-contractor and a general supplier may
therefore in exceptional cases be important. [page 5-23] § 5.05 Conclusion
The conclusion to which I come is that there are indeed
defects, under the second of our critic's headings, which
seriously mar the article and of which those who draft contracts
should take account as far as possible; but that in general it
establishes an adequate framework, provided that the courts
read it in the context not only of the particular contract itself,
but also of the practices of international trade. And, I would
add, provided that they resist the suggestion that the article can
yield an excuse for non-conformity. [page 5-24] FOOTNOTES
1. Section IV of the Convention contains two articles under the heading "Exemptions." See Appendix, arts. 79 and 80.
The proposition in art. 80 is self-evident and applies throughout the Convention; see J. Honnold, Uniform Law for International Sales under the 1980 United Nations Convention § 438 (1982).
2. 5 UNCITRAL Yearbook 39-40, 66-68, 79 (1974): 6 id. 60-61, 84-87, 106 (1975).
3. 8 id. 56-57, 135, 158-160 (1977).
4. U.N. Conference on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods, Official Records 378-387, 393, 408-412.
5. See Nicholas, Force Majeure and Frustration, 27 Am. J. Comp. L. 231 (1979).
6. B. Nicholas, French Law of Contract 193-204 (1982); 2 K. Zweigert & H. Kötz, An Introduction to Comparative Law 167-174 (1977); David, Frustration of Contract in French Law, 28(3) J. Comp. Leg. (3d ser.) 11 (1946).
7. Art. 74(1).
8. E.g., E. A. Farnsworth, Contracts 686-689 (1982); J.J. White & R.S. Summers, Uniform Commercial Code 129-131 (2d ed. 1980).
9. There are many studies. See 2 Zweigert & Kötz, op. cit. supra note 6, at 159-207, with references; Smit, Frustration of Contract: A Comparative Attempt at Consolidation, 58 Column. L. Rev. 287 (1958); Some Problems of Non-Performance and Force Majeure in International Contracts of Sale (International
Association of Legal Science Colloquium, Helsinki, 20-22 June 1960) (1961);
Rapsomanikis, Frustration of Contract in International Trade Law and
Comparative Law, 18 Duquesne L. Rev. 551 (1980). On Scandinavian law, see
Rodhe, Adjustment of Contracts on Account of Changed Conditions, 3
Scandinavian Studies in Law 153 (1959); Hellner, The Influence of the German
Doctrine of Impossibility on Swedish Sales Law, in 2 Ius Privatum Gentium
(Festschrift für Max Rheinstein) 705 (1969). On Soviet law, see Armstrong, The
Problem of Autonomy in Soviet International Contract Law, 31 Am. J. Comp.
L. 63, 81-93 (1983).
10. Some Problems, etc., op. cit. supra note 9, at 254 (remarks by Tunc); Nicholas, op. cit. supra note 6, at 197, 200-20l.
11. See, for example, Davis Contractors Ltd. v. Fareham Urban District
Council, [1956] A.C. 696, 724, 729 (H.L.). They have also sometimes cloaked
their thoughts in what is now the decent obscurity of a learned language by using the tag "non haec in foedera veni" ("it was not into this agreement that I entered"). It has been remarked that the tag is ill-chosen, since it comes from the speech in which Aeneas tries to justify his jilting and desertion of Dido (Aeneid, IV, 338-339). In fact, Aeneas pleads in the alternative, a procedure which is
never very convincing outside a law court. He first denies that he ever agreed
to marry her (and this is where the tag comes in) and then pleads the intervention of Jupiter, who has just sent peremptory word that Aeneas must resume his travels and fulfil his destiny. This no doubt was an impediment beyond his control,
though hardly one which he could not have been expected to take into account
at the time of the conclusion of the contract.
12. Op. cit. supra note 6, at 193; but see also id. at 206.
13. Patterson, The Apportionment of Business Risks Through Legal Devices, 24 Colum. L. Rev. 335 (1924); Restatement (Second) of Contracts, Introduction to Chap. 11; P.S. Atiyah, Introduction to the Law of Contract 211 (3d ed. 1981); Swan, The Allocation of Risk in the Analysis of Mistake and Frustration, in B.J. Reiter & J. Swan, eds., Studies in Contract Law 181 (1980); Zweigert & Kötz, op. cit. supra note 6, at 194.
14. 5 UNCITRAL Yearbook 79 (1974).
15. Id. at 39.
16. Birmingham, A Second look at the Suez Canal Cases: Excuse for Non-performance in the Light of Economic Theory, 20 Hastings L. J. 1393 (1969); Schlegel, Of Nuts and Ships and Sealing Wax, Suez, and Frustrating Things-The Doctrine of Impossibility of Performance, 23 Rutgers L. Rev. 419
(1969); Ashley, The Economic Implications of the Doctrine of Impossibility, 26
Hastings L.J. 1251 (1975); Posner & Rosenfield, Impossibility and Related
Doctrines in Contract Law: An Economic Analysis, 6 J. Leg. Stud. 83 (1977).
Even within the free enterprise context some expressions of the economic
approach are as doctrinaire in their way as the expressions of the will theory of a century ago. The maximization of the free will of the individual is transposed into economic terms as the maximization of the efficiency of the exchange, but the approach is equally a priori. Thus Posner & Rosenfield, supra at 89, say: "Since the object of most voluntary exchanges is to increase value or efficiency, contracting parties may be assumed to desire a set of contract terms that will maximize the value of the exchange. It is true that each party is interested only in the value of the contract to it. However, the more efficiently the exchange is structured, the
larger is the potential profit of the contract for the parties to divide between them." This seems just as artificial as the implied term. If the parties have not provided for the contingency, we must postulate a model economic man and say that the parties "should be presumed to be intending to allocate the risks as he would have done"; cf. Reiter, Comment, 56 Can. B. Rev. 98, 107-114 (1978). Again, whereas a distribution of the loss among the loss-causing agencies is easily intelligible in the law of torts, it is difficult to make a similar allocation in a contract case or to say which party occasions the loss or provides the setting for it; see McCamus, The Doctrine of Frustration in the Law of Sales 32-33 (research paper published in 3 Ontario Law Reform Commission, Report: Sale of Goods Project 201 (1979)).
17. McCamus, supra note 16.
18. Op. cit. supra note 1, at 430-432; cf. Berman, Excuse for Non-performance in the Light of Contract Practices in International Trade, 63 Colum. L. Rev. 1413 (1963); Reiter, supra note 16, at 107; P. Schlechtriem, Einheitliches UN-Kaufrecht 95 (1981).
19. A Propos the 1980 Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 31 Am. J. Comp. L. 333 (1983).
20. Honnold, op. cit. supra note 1, at § 427; Riese, Die Haager Konferenz über die internationale Vereinheitlichung des Kaufrechts, 29 RabelsZ 1, 53-55,79-81 (1965); H. Dölle, ed., Kommentar zum Einheitlichen Kaufrecht 454 (1976).
21. 5 UNCITRAL Yearbook 39-40 (1974); 6 id. 60-61 (1975).
22. Die UNCITRAL-Entwurf eines Übereinkommens über international Warenkaufvertrage, 43 RabelsZ 413, 165 (1979).
23. Schlechtriem, op. cit. supra note 18, at 97.
24. N. Horn, H. Kötz & H. Leser, German Private and Commercial Law 112-114 (1982); Nicholas, op. cit. supra note 6, at 30-31, 48-54; 2 Zweigert &
Kötz, op. cit. supra note 6, at 160-164. Another reason, at least for the common
lawyer from England or the Commonwealth, who subsumes impossibility and
impractibility under the wider heading of frustration, is that he thinks in terms of
frustration of the whole contract and has difficulty in applying it to a single
obligation or promise, whereas article 79 explicitly refers to "any of his
obligations"; cf. Nicholas, supra note 5, at 235-237.
25. Early drafts paid formal homage to the fault principle by requiring that the
impediment should have occurred without the fault of the party claiming the
exemption, but balanced this by providing that he should be deemed to have been
at fault unless he proved that he could not reasonably have been expected to
have taken the impediment into account (6 UNCITRAL Yearbook 68 (1975)).
This circuity was later removed (8 id. 56 (1977)). Fault plays an important
practical role in the Soviet law of contract. Johnson, No Liability Without Fault - The Soviet View, 20 Current Legal Problems 165, 170-179 (1967).
26. As in effect it is in German law (BGB §§ 282, 285). Professor Huber indeed finds the German law stated better in the Convention than in the BGB. Supra note 22, at 466.
27. Nicholas, Rules and Terms -- Civil Law and Common Law, 48 Tul. L. Rev. 946, 966-969 (1974).
28. C. civ. arts. 1625-1649.
29. BGB §§ 459-493.
30. 2 Zweigert & Kötz, op. cit. supra note 6, at 167.
31. White & Summers, op. cit. supra note 8, at 133.
32. Wallach, The Excuse Defense in the Law of Contracts: Judicial Frustration of the UCC Attempt to Liberalize the Law of Commercial Impracticability, 55 Notre Dame Lawyer 203 (1979); R.S. Duesenberg & L.P. King, Sales and Bulk Transfers under the Uniform Commercial Code § 14.13[3].
33. Restatement (Second) of Contracts §§ 281-284.
34. Id. § 285.
35. Feltham, The U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, [1981] J. Bus. L. 346, 359.
36. White & Summers, op. cit. supra note 8, at 131-132, with reference; also Comment 4 on DCC § 2-615. In Brauer & Co. (Great Britain) Ltd. v. Clark (James)(Brush Materials) Ltd., [1952] 2 All. E.R. 497 (C.A.), a seller was held not to be excused by a force majeure clause when the grant of an export license was made subject to a payment by him which would exceed what he was entitled to claim from the buyer, but it was suggested that it might have been otherwise if he had had to pay a hundred times as much. Id. at 500, 50l.
37. Infra [2].
38. Official Records 381-382.
39. Id. paras. 53, 69, 70.
40. The legislative history is curious. The Working Group's draft of paragraph (1) had "is not liable in damages." When the draft was considered by UNCITRAL, a proposal was successfully made to delete "in damages" for the reasons set out here. And yet when paragraph (5) was considered, it was agreed that any remedy remained available to either party except the action for damages. 8 UNCITRAL Yearbook 56, 57 (paras. 434-437, 455-456) (1977).
41. See arts. 45-52. The question is considered here in terms of non-performance by the seller, but the same applies in principle to non	performance by the buyer. See infra text at note 46.
42. Supra § 5.03[1].
43. Op. cit. supra note 18, at 97.
44. Supra note 22, at 467. 45. Official Records 383-385.
46. Op. cit. supra note 1, at § 348.
47. G.E. Palmer, The Law of Restitution §§ 7.4-7.7, 7.9.
48. E.A. Farnsworth, Contracts 704-705 (1982); Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 272; Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943; cf. Law Reform Commission of New South Wales, Report on Frustrated Contracts (1976).
49. Supra note 5, at 241-245; 6 UNCITRAL Yearbook 84-87 (1975). 50. 6 UNCITRAL Yearbook 60-61 (1975).
51. 8 id. 56 (para. 448) (1977).
52. There was some confusion at Vienna over the practical effect of the paragraph, some delegates interpreting it as an extension of the seller's exemption; cf. Schlechtriem, op. cit. supra note 18, at 98.