Dills v. Town of Enfield
Connecticut Supreme Court
557 A.2d 517 (1989)
Dills (plaintiff) contracted to buy land from Enfield (defendant) for $985,900 with a $100,000 deposit, and the contract itself included two separate termination clauses anticipating exactly the risks that later materialized: one letting Dills keep his deposit if he failed to obtain mortgage financing, and another letting Enfield keep it if Dills failed to submit acceptable final construction plans; when Dills failed on both fronts, Enfield voted to terminate first for the construction-plans failure, and Dills separately tried to terminate based on his financing failure to keep his deposit, but Enfield refused to return it.
Whether a party may be excused from performance due to impracticability by demonstrating that the occurrence of a supervening event or condition made the performance impracticable, the nonoccurrence of the event was a basic assumption on which the contract was made, the impracticability resulted without the fault of the party seeking to be excused, and the party has not assumed a greater obligation than the law imposes.