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: theCode's frustration article (the s.531 family — discharge on fundamental change ofcircumstances): 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;The syllabus prescribes a case for this section; its citation and holding are withheld until verified.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 — the Code's restoration rules; the loss-lying-where-it-falls problem; the "frustrated contracts" statutory adjustment of the English model as the comparative note).