BREACH. In Co2tracts. The viola tion of an obligation, engagement, or duty.
A continuing breach is one where the con, dition of things constituting a breach con tinues during a period of time, or where the acts constituting a breach are repeated at brief intervals. F. Moore, 242 ; 1 Leon. 62; 1 Salk. 141; Holt, 178; 2 Ld. Ram. 1125.
In Pleading. That part of the declara tion in which the violation of the defendant's contract is stated.
2. It is usual in assumpsit to introduce the statement of the particular breach, with the allegation that the defendant, contriving and fraudulently intending craftily and subtilely to deceive and defraud the plaintiff, neglected and refused to perform, or performed, the par ticular act, contrary to the previous stipulation.
3. In the breach or cause of action complained of must proceed only for the non-payment of money previously alleged to be payable; and such breach is very similar whether the action he in debt on simple con tract, specialty, record, or statute, and is usually of the following form : " Yet the said defendant, although often requested so to do, bath not weld paid the said sum of —dol lars, above demanded, nor any part thereof, to the said plaintiff, but bath hitherto wholly neglected and refused so to do, to the damage of the said plaintiff — dollars, and there fore he brings suit," tic.
4. The breach must obviously be governed nature of the stipulation: it ought to be assigned in the words of the contract, either negatively or affirmatively, or in words which are coextensive with its import and effect. Comyns, Dig.Pleader, C 45-49 ; 2 Wms. Saund. 181 b, c; 6 Cranch, 127. And see 5 Johns. N. Y. 168; 8 id. 111; 7 id. 376; 4 Dail. Penn. 436; 2 Hen, & M. V a. 446.
5. When the contract is in the disjunctive, as on a promise to deliver a horse by a particu lar day, or to pay a sum of money, the breach ought to be assigned that the defendant did not do the one act nor the other. 1 Sid. 440; llardr. 320; Comyns, Dig. Pleader, C.