Template:Specific performance capsule

From The Jolly Contrarian
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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).