Often, the provisions on force majeure in contracts are those provisions according to which lawyers, whether in-house or external consultants, only “skim” without going into details and without delving into their essence, since in most cases force majeure situations are a rather rare occurrence, and the section on force majeure circumstances itself is usually quite formulaic.
Nevertheless, during the period of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and as a consequence, due to the introduction of various restrictive measures by the state, the definition of a clear procedure and conditions for recognizing certain circumstances as force majeure is more than ever an urgent issue in legal support of activities of companies and the development of relevant contracts.
Taking this into consideration, our company very carefully and scrupulously approached the issue of risk assessment and a comprehensive study of the sections on force majeure in all contracts of our clients and introduced the relevant provisions into such contracts.
As a result, when one of our clients contacted us in a claim case under a supply agreement, where his position was rather weak, since the client did not make timely payments and a large penalty was charged, our preventive approach introducing a clear procedure for recognizing the circumstances of force majeure helped us to solve this issue without great losses for the client by obtaining a Certificate of confirmation of force majeure circumstances (force majeure) from the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan signed by the Deputy Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
The difficulty was that, according to the legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the impossibility of payment (lack of funds), as such, cannot be recognized as force majeure, however, our lawyers managed to substantiate and defend the client's position, including thanks to the provision on force majeure, which was introduced into the contract earlier.
For more information on the entire process of obtaining this certificate, you can contact us and we will be happy to help you in such matters.