The plaintiff in a breach of contract case faces an uphill battle in proving the case. Any damages the court awards are limited by the following considerations:
Causation: The plaintiff must prove that the breach caused the loss.
Certainty: The plaintiff must prove the amount of damages to a reasonable certainty.
Foreseeability (the Hadley rule): The plaintiff can recover only the losses that the defendant, at the time the parties made the contract, would reasonably have known would result from the breach.
Mitigation: The plaintiff must make reasonable efforts to minimize the cost of the breach.
