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Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017

Contracts legislation - Contractual mistakes

21: Purpose of this subpart

You could also call this:

“This part explains how courts can help fix mistakes in contracts”

This part of the law aims to help when people make mistakes in contracts. It gives courts special powers to fix these mistakes in certain situations. These powers are described in section 24 of the law.

The courts can use these powers along with other ways they already have to help with contract problems. However, when using these powers, the courts must be careful not to make contracts less secure or reliable in general.

The law wants to make things fairer when mistakes happen, but it also wants to make sure that people can still trust contracts overall.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6844075.

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Part 2 Contracts legislation
Contractual mistakes

21Purpose of this subpart

  1. The purpose of this subpart is to mitigate the arbitrary effects of mistakes on contracts by giving courts appropriate powers to grant relief in the circumstances mentioned in section 24.

  2. These powers—

  3. are in addition to, and not in substitution for, existing powers to grant relief in respect of matters other than mistakes; and
    1. must not be exercised in a way that prejudices the general security of contractual relationships.

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