WI · jury_instructions
Wis JI-Civil 3052
Substantial Performance
Each party to a contract has a duty to perform his or her obligations under the contract.
Evidence has been received that (defendant) may not have completely performed his
or her obligations. A failure to complete performance under a contract, or a defective
performance, does not prevent recovery if you find that there was substantial performance of
the contract. You must first find that there was a good faith effort to perform; if you find that
a good faith effort was made, you will then proceed to determine whether the performance
was, in a legal sense, substantial.
Performance may be substantial even though every detail is not in strict compliance
with the terms of the contract; something less than perfection is required. Some measure of
nonperformance will be tolerated if (defendant) has received, with relatively minor and
unimportant deviations, what he or she bargained for. But if the defect or uncompleted
performance is of such extent and nature that there has been no practical fulfillment of the
terms of the contract, then there has been no substantial performance.
History
Wis JI-Civil 3052 (1994). ©1994, Regents, Univ. of Wis. Prepared by the Wisconsin Civil Jury Instructions Committee of the Wisconsin Judicial Conference with the University of Wisconsin Law School; posted by the Wisconsin State Law Library with the University's permission.
Provenance
- Source
- wilawlibrary.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-24
- Edition
- 2026-09-24
- Content hash
86d859d164706890694d6b327d50fbdf191826b935cf540a059e268627263e83
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.