Specific performance is an equitable remedy that compels the breaching party to fulfill their contractual obligations. It is typically only ordered when monetary damages are insufficient. Specific performance is commonly used for contracts involving land due to land's uniqueness. However, the court will not order specific performance if it would cause undue hardship to the defendant or interfere with personal freedom. Injunctive relief is also available and can be either prohibitive (preventing action) or mandatory (compelling action to restore the previous situation).
Original Description:
presentation for first year law students on equitable remedies
Specific performance is an equitable remedy that compels the breaching party to fulfill their contractual obligations. It is typically only ordered when monetary damages are insufficient. Specific performance is commonly used for contracts involving land due to land's uniqueness. However, the court will not order specific performance if it would cause undue hardship to the defendant or interfere with personal freedom. Injunctive relief is also available and can be either prohibitive (preventing action) or mandatory (compelling action to restore the previous situation).
Specific performance is an equitable remedy that compels the breaching party to fulfill their contractual obligations. It is typically only ordered when monetary damages are insufficient. Specific performance is commonly used for contracts involving land due to land's uniqueness. However, the court will not order specific performance if it would cause undue hardship to the defendant or interfere with personal freedom. Injunctive relief is also available and can be either prohibitive (preventing action) or mandatory (compelling action to restore the previous situation).
remedies are insufficient to compensate the claimant.
Specific performance
In this order the court compels the party in breach to perform their obligations. In practise the court will apply this remedy with the following restrictions:
Specific performance will only apply where the damages are not sufficient. Thus if the claimant can replace the lost goods or the performance, specific performance order will not apply then. Therefore this order applies on land issues mostly. Because of their uniqueness. In nominal charges specific performance can be ordered. Case: Beswick v Beswick. The plaintiffs husband sold his land to his nephew on agreement that he would pay annual allowance to him and when he died to his wife. When he died the nephew refused to continue making payment. The court held she could not old charges since she was not part of the contract. On the other hand she could sew as the executor of the husbands estate. The damages amounted t nominal since the husband had died before payments had stopped being made and therefore there was no loss suffered. Thus the court ordered specific performance. If the specific performance can cause damage to the defendant or be unfair the order then cannot be applied. Case: Patel v Ali: The plaintiff had requested for specific performance to be applied on a sale of a house. The sellers husband had gone bankrupt and she had become disabled thus she needed to be close to close with family and friends thus moving out would have been unfair. The court thus refused specific performance and instead ordered damages.
If a contract is made through unfair means specific performance cannot apply.In the case of Walters v Morgan the defendant had agreed to give a lease of mining over the land he had just bought.When the defendant tried to enforce the lease by specific performance ,the court refused saying that the plaintiff took advantage of the fact that the defendant did not know the value of the lease at the time of making the agreement. There are two types of contracts in which their nature will not allow specific performance to take place. One is contracts of personal service where specific performance can interfere with ones personal freedom. The second type of contract is contracts which involve continuous duties.
It is difficult to know If there was proper performance but failure to perform according to the court can result to a charge of contempt by the court. Case :In Ryan v Mutual Tontine Association ;the lease of a flat was promised to tenants that there would be a resident porter in attendance at all time. This resident porter had another job and thus was absent. The court refused specific performance since that job required complete supervision.
The courts are a times willing to see the degree of supervision required and the hardships that follow, as in the case of Posner v Scott Lewis where tenants of some flats sued their landlord for not fulfilling the obligation of providing a resident porter.
It will not usually be ordered against a defendant if it could not have been ordered against the claimant, had they been the one in breach. So, for example, specific performance is never ordered when the claimant is a minor, because it cannot be ordered against a minor. Orders defendant not to do a particular thing.
Negative injunction is where the court will refuse one from carrying out a particular action.
Mandatory injunction is where the court orders defendant to take action to restore the situation which was there before.
Mandatory injunction would not apply if the defendant would loose more than what the claimant would gain.
Case laws:
Warner Bros Pictures Inc. v Nelson: The actress had agreed and signed no to work for any other company for a year however, she contracted with another company within this year and thus the warner brothers sought an injunction to prevent her form working with their rival company. A distinction with specific performance was made since she wasn't compelled to do anything.
Warren v Mendy: This case concerned a contract between a boxer and his manager, Warren. The contract gave Warren rights to manage the boxer for three years, but during that period the boxer lost confidence in Warren and asked advice on his career of Mendy. Warren sought an injunction against Mendy, to prevent him from inducing a breach of Warrens contract with the boxer. The court refused to grant disjunction saying that it would be like indirectly compelling performance of the contract.