It’s all too easy to assume that a breach of contract between two businesses means breaking the main terms of that contract. The truth is that every aspect of the contract has to be followed, right down to the time of each delivery.
Say you run a company that sources chemicals and mixes a specific cleaning solution for a military contract. Your supplier is supposed to make a delivery every Monday, at 10 in the morning. That gives your team enough time to have the solution done by Thursday, and then you ship out on Friday.
But what happens if your supplier makes the proper delivery, with the right chemicals and the exact amounts you ordered, but they don’t show up until 4:00 p.m. on Monday? They may claim they didn’t really breach the contract because they showed up on the right day and with the exact chemicals that were specified.
For your company, though, you lose an entire day of work. If you close at 5:00 p.m., that delivery may make it impossible to even get started on Monday. Now you’re a day behind. You can’t get done by Friday, which means the shipment can’t go out until the following Monday. Your supplier has put you massively behind schedule, and you’re now at risk of breaching your own contract with the military. They expect those cleaning chemicals on time and may choose a different civilian contractor in the future if you can’t deliver.
This is merely one example, but it shows how quickly one issue can spiral out of hand. Whenever a breach of contract takes place, be sure you know what options you have.