Posted: May 27th, 2022

The legality of the Doctrine of Frustrations in the Wake of the Corona Virus Pandemic

The legality of the Doctrine of Frustrations in the Wake of the Corona Virus Pandemic
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Following the outbreak of the COVID-19, it has caused massive economic destabilization throughout the globe, and many jobs are at stake. Many employers have been forced to terminate their employees prematurely in an attempt to navigate the financial crisis resulting from the pandemic. These terminations are bound to cause retaliatory la suits from the employees demanding severance compensations for the redundancy. However, most companies are shielded by the doctrine of frustrations (Jayabalan, 2020). The doctrine of frustration is a court order that outlines that the contract entered between parties. It could be an employer and employee are abruptly brought to an end resulting from a disaster that was not unforeseeable and thus is no one’s fault. Thus, the doctrine of frustrations excuses the parties involved in the contract in case of failure to perform their contractual duties.
With the break of the Covid-19, many businesses have been affected by the pandemic that has rendered many parties’ contractual obligations impossible; thus, it has forced them the principle purpose of entering the contract. Like many businesses, Four points of Sheraton Vancouver hotel have been with many uncertainties concerning upholding their contract; therefore, it has been forced to terminate most of their employees. However, following the redundancy, employees are entitled to severance fee following the involuntary means. Despite being within the legality of the doctrine of frustrations, Four Sheraton’s points are not likely to successfully argue the contracts were frustrated and might not be exempted from the obligation to provide compensation to their workers; this is because of the change in the temporary layoffs provisions of the employment standards Act ( ESA) (Monzo, 2020).
The government extended the termination layoffs o a maximum of 6 weeks beyond the 12 weeks minimum provision for the doctrine of frustrations as the government seeks to cushion employees that in the event of loss of their jobs they obtain and strike an appropriate balance for employees struggling to deal with the frustrations of COVID-19 and job loss. The travel heavily impacted Four points of Sheraton bans ad restrictions due to the COVID 19 pandemic as the hotel relies heavily on Tours and international travels their business has since been heaving impacted by COVID-19 (Tay, 2020). Therefore, they have been compelled to prematurely layoff most of its works claim protection from the doctrine of frustrations, thus seeking not o pay for severance compensations. The hotel claims that the pandemic is beyond their control and could not have been foreseen. This has seen most of its terminated employees filing complaints at the province’s Employment Standard Branch.
Sometimes frustrations happen, and things are beyond control; the success or failure of imposing the doctrine of frustration will depend on the matrix surrounding the contract. The delays imposed due to pandemic related restrictions will play the role I determined the imposition of the frustrations’ doctrine. Therefore, the hotel will consider the associated government restrictions before invoking the frustrations doctrine (Tay, 2020). Despite the hotel being impacted by the government’s measures and restrictions as it seeks to flatten the curve and curb the spread of the virus, the hotel will be forced to comply with regulations. While the government has made it clear that the employee’s right needs to be respected, the companies should be ready to pay penalties as the situation hopes to improve soon. Furthermore, the fact that the government has allowed employees to apply for variance makes the eligible form severance compensation following the ultimate termination based on the Coronavirus’s raging impacts.

References
Jayabalan, S. (2020). The Legality of Doctrine of Frustration in the Realm of Covid-19 Pandemic. Sociological Jurisprudence Journal, 3(2), 84-90.
Monzo, E. J. (2020). COVID-19 and Chapter 11. American Bankruptcy Institute Journal, 39(6), 16-58.
Tay, E. Y. (2020). Frustration, not Fortitude: the Case for Applying the Doctrine of Frustration to Leases Affected by COVID-19. Available at SSRN 3621875.

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