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Stipulation of No Contact Rendered Performance of Contracts Impossible/Contracts Rescinded

In a full-fledged opinion by Justice Acosta, the First Department determined that a stipulation entered into in Family Court, which prohibited all contact between the plaintiff, a well-known jazz singer, and defendant, the owner of a jazz club, made the performance of the contracts entered into by the plaintiff and defendant impossible.  Plaintiff was therefore entitled to rescission of the contracts.  Plaintiff and defendant (Valenti) had been in a romantic relationship which fell apart and plaintiff initially sought an order of protection from Family Court:

“[I]mpossibility excuses a party’s performance only when the destruction of the subject matter of the contract or the means of performance makes performance objectively impossible. Moreover, the impossibility must be produced by an unanticipated event that could not have been foreseen or guarded against in the contract” … . The excuse of impossibility is generally “limited to the destruction of the means of performance by an act of God, vis major, or by law” … .

In this case, performance of the contracts at issue has been rendered objectively impossible by law, since the stipulation destroyed the means of performance by precluding all contact between plaintiff and Valenti except by counsel… . Kolodin v Valenti, 2014 NY slip Op 00745, 1st Dept 2-6-14

 

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