When the purpose of one party to a contract causing delay was to defeat the other party, if the other party then fails to complete, the delaying party cannot insist on performance of the contract: ‘The whole laches here consists in the not clothing an equitable estate with a legal title, and that by a party in possession. Now I do not conceive that this is that species of laches, which will prevail against the equitable title; if I should hold it so, it would tend to overset a great deal of property in this country, where parties often continue to hold under an equitable contract for forty or fifty years, without clothing it with the legal title. I conceive, therefore, that possession having gone with the contract, there is no room for the objection. … But, in the present case, there is nothing but a resting on the equitable estate by a person in possession, without clothing it with a legal title, which I think never was held to be that sort of laches that would prevent relief.’
Judges:
Lord Redesdale, Lord Chancellor in Ireland
Citations:
(1804) 2 Sch and Lef 604
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Williams v Greatrex CA 1956
A purchaser agreed to buy land to be laid out in building plots. On payment of a deposit and giving notice, the purchaser was to be entitled to enter onto a particular plot in order to build on it. The arrangement met with difficulties, with the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Northern Ireland, Contract
Updated: 24 November 2022; Ref: scu.223434