The plaintiff had contracted to purchase a house for 6,000 pounds but the defendant failed to complete. Damages were awarded in lieu of specific performance under a Lord Cairns’ Act provision. At the date of the repudiatory breach the value of the house was 7,500 pounds. At the date of the order the value of the house was 11,500 pounds. The award to the plaintiff, which but for some matters which have no bearing on the point of principle, would have been the difference between the purchase price and the value at the date of the order, namely 5,500 pounds.
Held: The presence of a class F Land Charge registered against a property was a breach of the condition requiring vacant possession. A solicitor failing to complete a registration becomes liable to his client in negligence.
Megarry J said: ‘No doubt in exercising the jurisdiction conferred by the 1858 Act a court with equitable jurisdiction will remember that equity follows the law, and will in general apply the common law rules for the assessment of damages; but this is subject to the overriding statutory requirement that damages shall be ‘in substitution for’ the injunction or specific performance . .
In my judgment, therefore, if under Lord Cairns’ Act damages are awarded in substitution for specific performance, the court has jurisdiction to award such damages as will put the plaintiffs into as good a position as if the contract had been performed, even if to do so means awarding damages assessed by reference to a period subsequent to the date of the breach. This seems to me to be consonant with the nature of specific performance, which is a continuing remedy, designed to secure, inter alia, that the purchaser receives in fact what is his in equity as soon as the contract is made, subject to the vendor’s right to the money, and so on. On the one hand, a decree may be sought before any breach of contract has occurred, and so before any action lies for common law damages; and on the other hand the right to a decree may continue long after the breach has occurred. On the facts of this case, the damages that may be awarded are not limited to the andpound;1,500 that is appropriate to the date of the breach, but extend to the andpound;5,500 that is appropriate at the present day, when they are being awarded in substitution for specific performance.’
Megarry J
[1974] Ch 30, [1973] 1 All ER 897
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Clark and Another v Lucas Solicitors Llp ChD 31-Jul-2009
The claimants sought an order (by summary judgment) against the defendant firm of solicitors to require them to perform an undertaking they had given to provide evidence of the discharge of a mortgage. The defendants said the proper remedy was by an . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Professional Negligence, Land
Leading Case
Updated: 09 November 2021; Ref: scu.252339