Specific performance
Specific performance one of the great equitable remedies for breach of contract — designed to wrap an innocent, clean-handed contractual counterparty with the warm blanket of the courts of chancery when the cold economic rationalism of the common law leaves the moral senses still outraged. All it really amounts to is a court order directing a contractual counterparty to do what it has promised to do where the court has plausible grounds to think that it might not — most likely where “damages would not be an adequate remedy” — you will hear that phrase checked about a lot — and the innocent party cannot find someone else to perform the contract (and thus have a clear and manifestly adequate measure of loss for a damages claim).
Specific performance is a common remedy in commercial construction contracts, but less so for contracts for personal services where bleeding-heart liberal types — and let’s face it, the whole law of equity sprung from the brow of bleeding-heart liberal types — would fret that specific performance might restrict an individual’s freedom.
A court is less apt to grant specific performance where the contractual obligations are not clearly defined or it would have to supervise the performance over a period of time.