Termination of a contract and settlement of a claim are often seen as the final phase of a long road of disappointing contractual performance. However, they are still separate stages that require special legal advice, too. Alterlaw can guide you through the final but complicated stages of your legal agreements.
In some instances, contractual duties are not executed as expected or as agreed. A party may be dissatisfied with the way the other party fulfills their obligations or even with the fact that no fulfillment takes place at all. In other instances, the settlement of a claim may compromise the interests of both parties but does not eliminate the possibility of the claim’s further judicial enforcement. In order to avoid undesirable surprises after the termination of a contract or the settlement of a claim, carefully drafted agreements should be in place.
Termination agreements
Contract logistics can be defined as the outsourcing of resource management tasks to a third-party logistics (3PL) company/service provider. Such tasks may include transportation and distribution of goods, warehousing, cross-docking, inventory management, packaging, and freight forwarding. While some companies manage their own logistics, others find it efficient to hire specialized logistics contract companies due to their ability to absorb more volume increases and fluctuations than an in-house operation.
Smaller 3PL companies may have better response times and expertise in a specific domain or geography, but larger companies provide complete full-service capability and global reach. Examples of global 3PL companies are DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, UPS, CEVA Logistics and more.One way of terminating a contract is by agreement. Terminating contracts are drafted to explicitly state that the involved parties have mutually concluded to end the contract and the respective rights and obligations arising from it. They should specify the parties involved and affected by the termination, their contractual relationship, the terms under which the termination shall enter into force, and the reason for such termination. Such reason may be the irreconcilable differences in the execution of the contractual relationship or even a better offer from another provider.
It is essential that you seek for legal advice especially in the case of outstanding obligations. There is a great chance that while one party has fully discharged their part of the contract, the other has left theirs partially or totally unfulfilled. In this case, a termination agreement will set the framework of conditions to be met before actual termination of the existing contract.
Settlement agreements
Even though they are widely used in the context of employer-employee relationship, settlement agreements are of importance in the field of claims negotiations, too. The negotiations stage itself aims to find a solution “in the middle” satisfying both parties. By signing a settlement agreement, the parties confirm that the outcome of the negotiations is final and no judicial litigation will follow.
A settlement agreement may have the form of a release and discharge document that summarizes the progress and results of the negotiations and reflects the parties’ compromise. Under such document, upon fulfilling the prescribed obligations, the parties agree to waive and abandon the claim regarding the respective incident, as well as to drop any judicial proceedings already initiated.
Alterlaw’s practice
Based on its experience on contracts, Alterlaw is well aware of the pitfalls that even the final phase of a contract or a claim settlement may hide. Either you think that your contractual relationship has come to a dead-end or you want to safeguard your claim’s settlement, Alterlaw can assist you in terminating your contractual obligations or settling your claims in the way that suits best your interests.