6 Discharge by Impossibility and the Doctrine of Frustration

1. The doctrine: the supervening impossibility's discharge — the contract validly formed, the world changed: the performance impossible-or-radically-different; the ancient-formula's modernization (from the civil law's impossibilium nulla obligatio to the common law's frustration — Taylor v. Caldwell (the destroyed music hall) and Krell v. Henry (the coronation's cancellation) by name only); 2. The frustration's grounds (the catalogue): destruction of the subject-matter; the supervening illegality; the non-occurrence of the event-and-state making performance's foundation (the frustration-of-purpose); death-or-incapacity in the personal contracts; the radical change of circumstances (the rebus sic stantibus — the Code's own adoption: the Code's frustration article (the s.531 family — discharge on fundamental change of circumstances): the Nepali codification of the doctrine); 3. The non-frustration cases (the limits): the contract's own risk-allocation (the force- majeure clauses' mastery — the clause displacing the doctrine); the mere hardship-and- expense (the commercial bad luck not the doctrine: the market's collapse, the price's rise); the self-induced impossibility; the foreseeability's-and-bargained-risk questions; 4. The prescribed authority: Pradip Raj Pandey v. Karmalaxmikanshakar (NKP 2071, Vol. 10, No. 3, D.No. 9368 — the doctrine-of-frustration case as the syllabus annotates): the Supreme Court's application of the frustration doctrine — the Nepali jurisprudence's anchor (read with the Code's fundamental-change provision); 5. The consequences: the discharge ab initio-or-prospective (the Code's-and-doctrine's design: the prospective end); the restitution's unwinding (the payments-and-benefits returned…