| Pub. Date | : July 2021 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Law Review |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJLR20721 |
| Author Name | : Emmanuel Mensah Aboagye, Nana Osei Owusu and Henrietta Fletcher |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Arts & Humanities |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 9 |
In the wake of the recent Covid-19 pandemic, many governments have taken an entrenched position to lock down their cities to prevent its spread. There has been a lot of effect on contract performance. Are parties who enter into such contract liable when they fail to perform their contractual obligations or are merely associated with Covid-19 as a force majeure? This paper compares contract performance in China and Ghana in the wake of Covid-19. The study finds that force majeure clauses in China are coded in Article 117 of the Chinese Contract Law; however, in Ghana, it is generally scattered but mainly found in the Contract Law Act, 1960 of Ghana. The Contract Law Act, 1960 does not capture the force majeure clause. However, force majeure clauses are agreed upon by the contractual parties in consultation with force majeure clauses from common laws. Also, force majeure is not implied in contract performance; hence, the list of events constituting force majeure should be agreed upon by the contractual parties and captured in the contract. Therefore, Article 117 of the Chinese Contract Law expounds that a party who was unable to perform a contract due to force majeure is exempted from liability in part or whole in the light of the impact of the event of force majeure except otherwise provided by law.
Work-related activities, exchange of services in the public sector, and commercial businesses thrive under contracts (Mulcahy and Tillotson, 2004). In our everyday life, people make contracts day in day out, whether these parties know it or not. People engage in contracts anytime they spend money on anything, for instance, when a person buys either a bus or flight ticket, a meal from the canteen and books. The contract can either be written or spoken (oral); may arise by parties' conduct; may involve large or trivial sums of money and maybe of short or long duration. A contract is a provision that regulates the social relation arising from the transactions of property amongst individuals, such as between legal persons or legal persons and an organization (Tao, 2012). The legal framework of the Chinese contract law is the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China passed in 1999, which has the general provisions