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When disappointment leads to a legal claim

In this blog we would like to discuss what the options are if one of the parties decides to break off the negotiation, at a stage where this is no longer optional.

Divide, tell (or not) and conquer

Whether or not negotiations can still be broken off depends on whether or not a “legally relevant trust” has arisen on the part of the other party.

Break off! Is that possible?

That's called freedom of contract. That you can negotiate with who you want and about what you want. And that you can break off negotiations.

That's called freedom of contract. That you can negotiate with who you want and about what you want. And that you can break off negotiations. But when you're negotiating, you can get to a stage where you can't just break off anymore. Or at least not without consequences. That is something that is often forgotten in practice!

The moment at which you are no longer allowed to break off negotiations occurs when the other party, or to put it more mildly, the negotiating partner, has the “legally relevant confidence” (in Dutch: “rechtensrelevante vertrouwen”) that a contract will result from the negotiations. This means that, if the parties are at each other's throats, it is examined whether the averagely careful person in the position of the negotiating partner must also have had that trust. In other words: if every other right-thinking person thought that a deal would be reached, then you should not opt out. Ah, so pay close attention!

What is looked at in practice is the extent to which there is already so-called “partial agreement” on the topics that both parties intend to settle. There is no agreement yet on the total contract, but there is agreement on parts of it. The more parts there is already agreement on, the greater the chance that the other party has that “legally relevant trust”. Or if both parties go to court: the more likely it is that the judge will assume that the party that did not stop the negotiation has, or at least had, that confidence.

Is there a formula for that? Like “if you agree on 6 out of 10 subtopics, then that presumption exists?” No, that's not how the law works. Everything depends on the “relative relevance” of those topics. In other words: how important is a sub-topic as part of the whole of what the parties are trying to arrange with each other? We will come back to this in the blog “Divide, tell (or not) and conquer”.

The above means that if you want to keep your hands free, you have to pay very close attention to what you say and write down during a negotiation. You make reservations, state in black and white that your bond is dependent on reaching a written agreement, or obtaining permission from management, etc. Businesslike, strict, sometimes perhaps even a bit cold. This is at odds with the commercial interests in which parties ultimately try to achieve something good together. If you want to combine those two perspectives in a negotiation process (keeping your hands free as long as possible, getting closer as quickly as possible) in one and the same person, then that is quite a task. That's also where “good guy, bad guy” comes from. Do it in pairs. One focuses on coming closer together and is the good guy. This leaves the other person free to be the bad guy, sometimes hard on the content and perhaps, if necessary, the man. Together you are stronger, and hopefully you are able to not only reach an agreement, but a GOOD agreement.

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