Cost of completion generally refers to the expense of finishing a project, promise, or contract. Normally, cost of completion appears in contract law as a type of damages awarded to a party in a contract that another party intentionally breached. Jurisdictions differ on when cost of completion applies, if at all. A famous example of cost of completion is the Minnesota case of Groves v. John Wunder Co. where a company broke a lease contract to restore land after removing gravel from it. The court awarded Groves the cost of completion to make the land level again, but some other courts would have used other types of damages that would award only a fraction of the cost to complete the contract.
[Last updated in June of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]