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I'm not going to say a bit more about specific forms of injunction to try and
give you a sense of why these developed, how they developed, and how these
remedies were preferable in certain circumstances to the remedies that could
be offered by the common law courts. So let's start with the remedy of
specific performance. Suppose that you have found your dream
house. Don't think this is a medieval house, but
anyway, let's suppose you found a dream house.
You want to buy the house. The owner is selling the house.
You offer to buy it. The seller agrees to sell it to you.
You have a contract. You're very happy, this is your dream
house. Just at the point where you're going to
complete the sale to move into it, the owner says he's changed his mind and he
doesn't want to sell you the property. Now, what you have there is a breach of
an agreement. You have a breach of contract.
If you go to the Common Law Courts for a remedy, the Common Law Courts will say
absolutely, you said you would buy it. You had a legally binding agreement.
You are entitled to a remedy. What we will give you is compensation.
We will give you money. But you say, I do not want money, I want
my dream house. There's no other house I want, that's the
only place that I want. The common law can offer you nothing.
If you go to Courts of Equity, or at the time you went to Courts of Equity, you
could say we had an agreement. He agreed to, sell me the house.
He now refuses to sell me the house. Give me a remedy.
And the chancellor would say, in fairness, you must do what you agreed.
And he would grant an order for specific performance.
That means, the person must do the thing that they have agreed to do.
And in that respect, in this particular instance what would happen is that the
person who owns the house will be compelled to sell it to, to sell it to
you. And that is a much more valuable remedy
than having the compensation that you didn't want.
another example is the example of an injunction.
You've moved into your dream house. You love it, but the problem is that your
next door neighbor decides to keep pigs in their back garden.
So you're living in your house, but your neighbor has these pigs that honk and
snort and make a smell, and you've got mud, and it's hideous.
And, what do you do? You go to the Common Law Courts, and say,
what can I do about this? And the Common Law Courts say, we agree,
this is awful. It's a nuisance.
It's all kinds of things. We can give you compensation.
You don't want compensation. You want the neighbor to get rid of the
pigs. In equity, you would be entitled.
You might be able to get an injunction. An injunction is essentially an order
from the court prohibiting somebody from doing something.
So an injunction to stop your neighbor from keeping pigs next door to you.
And that will make you much happier than having the money.
So, those are some of the ways in which equity provided something more, something
more flexible and something more and often something more valuable than would
have been available under the common law system or in the Common Law Courts.
the system of equity, the Court of Chancery, developed and grew over the
years In the 19th century, however, the Court of Chancery had begun to develop
some of the same problems that had be visible in the common-law courts in the
15th century. There was a problem with a sense that
some of the decisions in equity were somewhat arbitrary.
Some of the cases became very expensive and lengthy and during the century,
during the 19th century, particularly, under Lord Chancellor Lord Eldon cases in
Chancery began to take an enormously long time become enormously expensive and
indeed become positively traumatic for people seeking a remedy through Chancery.
And in fact, it was around this time that Charles Dickens wrote his novel Bleak
House. I recommend this to anybody who wants to
have any understanding of how the legal system was operating in the 19th century.
the story of Bleak House, the central issue in the novel of Bleak House, is the
case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. It's a case over a disputed will that is
being decided in Chancery. And this case runs throughout the entire
book. And the punchline is that the case goes
on for so many years, so many generations, endlessly coming back to
court, endlessly being debated by the lawyers.
It takes so long and costs so much money. That by the time decision is given by the
judge in the Chancery court in the end, there is nothing left to dispense.
Once he gives his decision as to who should inherit under the will, there's
actually no money left, because it's all been spent on lawyers' fees and this was
Charles Dickens' view. Charles Dickens actually spent some time
as a lawyer. And he had a particular loathing for some
of the procedures of English civil justice.
And I certainly recommend anyone interested in this to read Bleak House.
He says in Chapter 1, he describes the Court of Chancery.
This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted
lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and
its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels
and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's
acquaintance. Which gives to monied might the means
abundantly of wearing out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience,
courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not
an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give, who does not often
give, the warning, suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here.
So as you see Charles Dickens was not a fan of the Court of Chancery.
In 1873, the Common Law Courts and the Courts of Equity were actually combined
in the Judicature Acts 1873 to 85. Although, one of the divisions of the
current High Court is still called the Chancery Divisions, still called the
Chancery Division, all courts now deal with both common lore and equitable
principles and remedies. We'll talk about the divisions of the
High Court in one of the subsequent, subsequent lectures.
So that's the development of equity and the bringing together of equity and
common law in the 19th century. [MUSIC].