Mineral Park Land Co. v. Howard
Citation and Court
Mineral Park Land Co. v. Howard, 172 Cal. 289 (Cal. 1916)
Facts
Howard contracted with Mineral Park to take all the gravel and earth needed for a construction project from Mineral Park’s land, at a fixed price per yard. Howard took the amount of gravel available above the water line, but the remainder of the gravel on the land was below the water table and could only be extracted at enormous additional expense—ten to twelve times the contract price. Howard stopped taking gravel and obtained it elsewhere. Mineral Park sued for breach.
Issue
Whether a party to a requirements contract is excused from performance when the remaining supply of the contracted good can only be obtained at a cost so disproportionate to the contract price as to make performance commercially impracticable.
Holding
The court held that Howard was excused from taking the submerged gravel because extraction was practically and commercially impossible—the cost was so extreme that performance in the contemplated sense was impossible.
Rule / Doctrine
Commercial impracticability excuses performance when a supervening circumstance (here, the physical inability to extract gravel at a commercially reasonable cost) makes performance possible in theory but commercially impracticable in fact. A party need not literally perform the impossible; if performance would require expenditures so grossly disproportionate to what was contemplated, it may be excused as impracticable.
Significance
One of the earliest and most influential American cases on commercial impracticability, anticipating the doctrine later codified in UCC § 2-615. Establishes that impossibility is not limited to literal physical impossibility but includes situations where performance is only possible at extreme and unreasonable cost.