The coronavirus pandemic has elevated “force majeure”—a rarely used, relatively obscure contract provision—to a top-of-mind issue for companies scrambling to figure out where gaps are forming in their supply chain.
Taken from French civil law, force majeure is “a contract provision that excuses a party’s performance of its obligations under a contract when certain circumstances beyond their control arise, making performance inadvisable, commercially impracticable, illegal, or impossible,” according to a recent coronavirus and force majeure story in The National Law Review.
