R2d § 350
Avoidability as a Limitation on Damages
Except as stated in subsection (2), damages are not recoverable for loss that the injured party could have avoided without undue risk, burden, or humiliation. The injured party is not precluded from recovery to the extent that he has made reasonable but unsuccessful efforts to avoid loss.
Professor's notes
Two-part rule. (1) Losses the non-breaching party could have avoided through reasonable steps are not recoverable. (2) Reasonable but unsuccessful efforts do not forfeit recovery. The burden of proving failure to mitigate is on the breaching party. The standard is reasonableness, not perfection; the rule does not demand undue risk, burden, or humiliation.
Rockingham County v. Luten Bridge operationalizes the rule from the supplier side: the bridge builder could not pile on costs after the county repudiated. Parker v. Twentieth Century-Fox tests the "comparable employment" wrinkle: a substitute must be substantially similar in kind to count.
Common misunderstanding: students treat mitigation as a duty to act perfectly. It is not. It is a cap on damages: the breaching party does not pay for losses the non-breaching party could have reasonably avoided. The telos is efficiency and good-faith allocation of post-breach burdens. This is a paradigm mishpat: the policy rationale sits on the face of the rule.
Cases that operationalize this rule
Section 350 is the mitigation provision. It bars recovery for losses the non-breaching party could have avoided through reasonable efforts and protects the non-breaching party who tries to mitigate but fails. The standard is reasonableness, not perfection: and mitigation cannot demand undue risk, burden, or humiliation.