All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter focuses on the commercially significant remedies of injunctions, specific performance, rectification, and rescission — paying particular attention to injunctions. Although it is true that damages for the breach of Common Law obligations are available ‘as of right’, and that equitable remedies are inevitably discretionary, it is important to recognize that such discretion is informed by a number of key principles. Importantly, equitable remedies are only available where Common Law remedies are inadequate: Equity can only intervene where the Common Law fails to do justice. However, equitable orders can be made in support of both legal and equitable rights. Failure to comply with an equitable order constitutes the crime of contempt, the punishment for which may be imprisonment, sequestration of the defendant’s assets, a fine, or a combination of these sentences.
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20. Equitable Orders
Paul S Davies and Graham Virgo
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Independent Trustee Services Ltd v GP Noble Trustees Ltd [2012] EWCA Civ 195, Court of Appeal
Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Independent Trustee Services Ltd v GP Noble Trustees Ltd [2012] EWCA Civ 195, Court of Appeal. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Derek Whayman.
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4. Equitable remedies in modern English law
This chapter discusses equitable remedies. Equitable remedies apply in all fields of law, from disputes over property or entitlement in contract and intellectual property, to preventing harm, or to the proceeds of wrongdoing being dissipated before a claim can be made against them. Equity evolved these remedies in the Court of Chancery to ameliorate the common law. Sometimes the remedies (like rescission) modified the harshness of the common law rules. Sometimes the remedies (like specific performance and injunction) provide alternative relief to the common law remedy of damages. Key elements of all three actions of recission, specific performance, and injunctions are covered.
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20. Equity: doctrines and remedies
Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. In general, the leading cases on equitable doctrines and remedies are very old. Originally developed by the old Court of Chancery in constructive competition with the common law courts, equity is now applied by the unified Supreme Court of England and Wales. This chapter looks at particular doctrines and remedies that have been developed over many centuries to help predict the way in which equity will operate in various types of case. It first discusses the distinction between different doctrines of equity before turning to the requirements for the various equitable remedies, the likelihood of success when applying for an equitable remedy and the on-going significance of equity to modern commercial life. The chapter also examines the doctrines of conversion, reconversion, satisfaction, performance and election, along with the discretionary nature of equitable remedies, injunctions, rescission, rectification, account and subrogation.
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Pitt v Holt, Futter v Futter [2013] UKSC 26, Supreme Court
Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Pitt v Holt, Futter v Futter [2013] UKSC 26, Supreme Court. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Derek Whayman.
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8. Resulting Trusts
This chapter examines the nature of the resulting trust. It explains that a trust is called resulting when the beneficial interest in the property returns to the person who transferred the property in the first place. It discusses the theoretical foundation of the resulting trust and its categories, which include presumed and automatic resulting trusts. This chapter examines the consequences of a total or partial failure of express trust and the Quistclose trust which arises where property is transferred for a purpose which has failed, and suggests that there is no need to expand the resulting trust to encompass claims in unjust enrichment and following the rescission of a contract.
