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 leave his moral senses — and those of the Ch.D — still outraged. All it really amounts to is a court order directing a contracting party 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 chucked about a lot — and the innocent party cannot find someone else to perform the contract in the breaching party’s stead (and thus have a clear and adequate measure of loss for a damages claim).
Specific performance is common 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 in the paid advancement of one person’s affairs might restrict that individual’s freedom to perform specifically in the advancement of another’s.
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.