The Court of Appeal held that a show cause letter stating an intention to terminate a building contract in the future, without a further step communicating the decision to terminate, does not itself effect termination under a clause requiring notice of intention to terminate. However, the contract was discharged by inferred agreement (abandonment) by the time of trial, operating prospectively and preserving accrued rights to damages. On damages, the Court held that the trial judge erred by calculating the capital loss on a counterfactual of sale in May 2022 while simultaneously awarding interest and outgoings incurred between 2019 and 2022 on a different counterfactual of sale in May 2019; the two counterfactuals were internally inconsistent, and the Owner was required to be held to his pleaded case based on the 2019 counterfactual. The Court found no error in the trial judge's factual findings on mitigation, including the rejection of the Builder's offer to rectify as not credible.
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