For a seller who is a 'volume dealer', when may the seller recover lost profits?

• A. Contract price minus resale price
• B. Lost profit
• C. Market price minus contract price
• D. Resale price minus contract price

Answer: (B)

The key idea is the lost-volume doctrine for damages in a seller’s breach case under the UCC. When a seller is a volume dealer, the buyer’s breach can prevent a sale that the seller would have made anyway to another customer. In that situation, the seller isn’t just entitled to the simple price differential from reselling or the market price difference; they’re entitled to the profits they would have earned on fulfilling the contract. That means damages equal the lost profits—the contract price minus the seller’s expected costs (the profit the seller would have earned from that sale). This reflects the reality of a high-volume business where one breached contract doesn’t deprive the seller of the sale entirely but deprives them of the additional profit from that unit. So the best measure for a volume dealer is lost profits.