contract-law india breach-of-contract
Fighting customer service abuse
<p>Large corporation A has contractual obligations to provide customer service by phone.</p>
<p>By hiring many people to continuously make fake phone calls and jam up the company's phone lines, a third party disrupts A's ability to field calls from real customers.</p>
<p>Would any defenses allow A to avoid liability if a customer sues A for breach of contract based on its failure to provide customer service by phone?</p>

<p>If a customer sued the company for breach of contract under the circumstances you described, the company could be able to avoid liability by asserting an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impracticability" rel="nofollow noreferrer">impracticability</a> defense.</p>
<p>Under Restatement § 261, the impracticability defense excuses a party from performance when</p>
<blockquote>
<p>after a contract is made, a party's performance is made impracticable without his fault by the occurrence of an event the non-occurrence of which was a basic assumption on which the contract was made, his duty to render that performance is discharged, unless the language or the circumstances indicate the contrary.</p>
</blockquote>
