On a recent update from the Supreme Court of India, we learnt that they applied the Doctrine of Impossibility to judgments and court orders. Before beginning to understand the basis of such application, it is necessary to grasp an idea about “Doctrine of Impossibility”. The origin of this doctrine lies with the law of Contracts. It is related to the frustration of contracts on the ground that a party to the contract is unable to perform the obligation on its part merely because of the impossibility of performance of such contract. This amounts to the discharge of the party from its obligation.

Such impossibility of performance becomes applicable to a party as a defence even if it is not a written part of the contract. If we make this understanding applicable to the current pandemic situation, the impossibility of performance gets justified in various scenarios. Things have become very uncertain in such trying times and therefore, there is are increased chances of impossibility of performance.

The first case where impossibility of performance was used as a defence was Taylor v. Caldwell[1]. In this case a hall booked for a certain programme was destroyed by fire and hence, the booking could not be completed. This is when the owner of the hall was relieved from his liability to pay damages because of non-performance. The Doctrine of Impossibility is made applicable majorly on the basis of facts and circumstances. If we focus on these factors on today’s date, the probability of use of this defence becomes high. Various sectors made use of this doctrine in order to waive off their liability towards the other party because of the pandemic.

On bringing the focus back to the primary issue, we understand that the Doctrine of Impossibility also got used by the Supreme Court in lieu of the pandemic. This is one instance where this doctrine is used beyond the sphere of contracts. The Apex Court took this plea of impossibility of performance while hearing an appeal by the State of Uttar Pradesh against an order passed by the Allahabad High Court. Allahabad High Court had passed an order to provide ambulances with ICU facilities to all villages of Uttar Pradesh within one month. This is when the Apex Court was compelled to make use of the Doctrine of Impossibility in a judgment to state that it is practically impossible to comply with such an order within a month as there are almost 97,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh. With this plea taken by the Supreme Court, the Doctrine of Impossibility gets applied to judgments also and not only contractual obligations. Hence, this case of State of Uttar Pradesh versus In Re Inhuman Condition at Quarantine Centres and for Providing Better Treatment to Corona Positive acts as a precedent for this applicability.