The question arises as to why any party would want to provide notice of anticipatory breach.

If a party provides notice that the contract will not be completed, an anticipatory breach occurs.

The two forms of breach are failure to perform and anticipatory breach.

This is especially helpful in cases of anticipatory breach, as the claimant does not have to wait for the date when performance falls due.

When one side commits an anticipatory breach, the other party (the innocent party) is given an option.

This latter point would lie clear, for example, if the buyer responded to the anticipatory breach by indicating that due delivery was still expected.

The duty to mitigate does not apply where the innocent party refuses to accept the anticipatory breach as a repudiation.

The second qualification is that an innocent party who accepts an anticipatory breach becomes under a duty to mitigate (minimise) his loss.

Anticipatory breach occurs when repudiation is made before the obligation comes due or in anticipation of an obligation to come.

Anticipatory breach?

Repudiation and prevention of performance are forms of anticipatory breach, since both can be committed prior to the stipulated time for performance.

However, his past violence had not been forgotten and the local magistrate arrested him and imprisoned him, citing an anticipatory breach of the peace.

The relevant market price is still that prevailing on the date for actual performance and not that prevailing on the earlier date of the anticipatory breach.

Example: if Company A refuses to pay substantial interim payments to Company B, Company B can begin legal action due to anticipatory breach.

In such a case it is possible for either the seller or the buyer to commit an anticipatory breach of contract, i.e. to repudiate the contract before the time for performance.

Because he is waiting to see if the anticipatory breach turns into non-performance in fact, he is not expected to buy any replacement goods until the date of actual non-performance.

Last September, Chad A. Vignola, a lawyer for the city agency, wrote the landlord a letter warning that any attempt to deregulate the rent "shall be deemed an anticipatory breach of obligations."

The reason is that once the performing party is informed of the anticipatory breach, a duty is then created for the performing party to mitigate damages as a result of the breach.

A breach by anticipatory repudiation (or simply anticipatory breach) is an unequivocal indication that the party will not perform when performance is due, or a situation in which future non-performance is inevitable.

An anticipatory breach gives the non-breaching party the option to treat such a breach as immediate, and, if repudiatory, to terminate the contract and sue for damages (without waiting for the breach to actually take place).

The arbitrator held that Vitol's telex was an anticipatory breach of contract, but Norelf's failure to take further steps to perform the contract was sufficient communication to Vitol that they had accepted the repudiation.

If B is threatened with a breach of contract he may be able to treat the contract as repudiated and sue for anticipatory breach or, of course, he may await the breach and then sue for damages.

Tai Hing Cotton Mill Ltd. v. Kamsing Knitting Factory (1978 P.C.) established that the same principle applies where the innocent party immediately accepts the anticipatory breach as a repudiation of the contract.

Anticipatory repudiation, also called an anticipatory breach, is a term in the law of contracts that describes a declaration by the promising party to a contract, that he or she does not intend to live up to his or her obligations under the contract.

Soon after, in The Mihailis Angelos [1971] 1 QB 164, it was held the impossibility of the shipowner to meet the "expected ready to load" date, ipso facto entitled the charterer to repudiate for anticipatory breach of condition.