Time Limits to Sue to Enforce a Breach of Contract Action

When it comes to the time that you have to file a breach of contract claim, you may think that this is a straightforward question. But it’s more complex than you may think, and getting it wrong or waiting too long can end up forever barring you from being able to sue for breach of contract.

In Writing or Oral?

The first thing is to determine whether your contract is based on a writing or whether it is based on an oral agreement.

In writing, the time limit to file a breach of contract is five years, but that’s shortened to four years for oral contracts or agreements.

But it can be more complex than that, because that’s only if you’re asking for monetary damages. If you are asking for specific performance, you only have one year to file a breach of contract claim. Specific performance is when you want to force someone to do what they were supposed to do under the contract, other than the payment of monetary damages.

Starting the Time Calculations

Those time limits aren’t the difficult part. Often, the difficult part is determining when the clock actually starts—that is, when do we actually start counting the 5, 4 or 1 year clock?

It starts when the contract is breached. But even that isn’t as simple as it seems, because often, contracts happen in multiple parts. For example, there may be a construction contract with multiple phases, or a payment contract with multiple payment installments.

That means that the clock on the time limit that you have to sue, can start multiple times, at different points, in the same contract, as various parts of the contract are breached. If an installment payment due today is breached, the clock would start today. If you miss the payment due next month, the limitations period would start next month for that payment amount, and so on.

That means that it’s technically possible to sue for a breach of contract, but only be able to sue for some, but not all of your potential damages, because some defaults or missed deadlines or breaches may be within, and some outside of, the time limit to sue for breach of contract.

Modifications and Other Agreements

Oftentimes, contracts are modified, or there are addendums signed, or the parties come to separate settlement agreements on pending breaches. Any of these documents may be considered second contracts, and breaching them, would be a separate breach, with a separate starting period, and thus, a separate statute of limitations, than the original contract.

Tolling the Time

In some cases, a party can argue that the statute of limitations is tolled—which means, temporarily paused, or not counted towards the time expired.

If parties are negotiating, or if there has been a partial payment, or if there has been some misrepresentation that caused the other side to delay in enforcing its rights, the party seeking to enforce the contract, and who is facing a statute of limitations deadline, can argue that “the clock was stopped,” and thus, that time shouldn’t be counted, thus allowing the statute of limitations to be extended.

That breach of contract case isn’t as easy as you may think it is. Get help. Call our Fort Lauderdale business lawyers at Sweeney Law P.A. at 954-440-3993 for help.

Source:

floridabar.org/public/consumer/tip012/