Attorney General V Blake House of Lords

Attorney General v Blake, [2001] 1 A.C. 268 (2000)
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is still the enforced performance of an obligation. The
same is the case where an injunction is granted or a
decree of specific performance or the ordering of an
account.
It is this class of rights which the Crown is unable
to invoke as a result of the judgment of Sir Richard
Scott V-C upheld by the Court of Appeal. There is no
obligation of Blake left to perform or which now can
be enforced. That time passed with the failure to apply
for an injunction in 1989 or 1990. The Crown has no
right to an injunction to stop the payment of the royalty
to Blake and procure its payment to the Crown instead.
The Crown has no right to the royalty and does not now
assert one.
The law, including equity, provides extensive and
effective remedies for protecting and enforcing
property rights. It is no criticism of the law that they are
not available now to the Crown. The Crown does not
have the substantive rights to support such remedies.
Two further points need to be briefly mentioned. There
are cases which are treated as so closely analogous to
proprietary rights that they are covered by remedies
which are appropriate to such rights. The contractual
right in Reid-Newfoundland Co v Anglo-American
Telegraph Co Ltd [1912] AC 555 was held to have
created a trust. In Reading v Attorney General [1951]
AC 507 , restitutionary remedies were awarded against
an army sergeant who used his army uniform and
army vehicle to enable him to assist smugglers. The
money he was paid by the smugglers was held to be
money for which he must account to his employer in
the same way as if he had received a bribe: see per
Asquith LJ in the Court of Appeal. These cases would
have assisted the Crown had they succeeded on the
facts before Sir Richard Scott V-C. The other point
is that where a court declines to grant an injunction
it may award damages in lieu. This does not alter the
principles which are applicable nor does it provide the
Crown with a remedy in the present case; but it is
relevant to the understanding of the authorities.
The Crown has to allege a breach of contract. This
is not a claim to the performance of any obligation
save in the sense used by Lord Diplock that contractual
obligations are correctly understood as being the
obligation to perform or pay damages for failing to
do so—the primary and secondary 
*298
obligation:
Photo Production Ltd v Securicor Transport Ltd [1980]
AC 827 . The claim is for damages in order to put
the plaintiff in the same position as if the contract had
been performed. It is a 
substitute
for performance. That
is why it is necessarily compensatory. The error is to
describe compensation as relating to a loss as if there
has to be some identified physical or monetary loss
to the plaintiff. In the vast majority of cases this error
does not matter because the plaintiff's claim can be
so described without distortion. But in a minority of
cases the error does matter and cases of the breach of
negative promises typically illustrate this category.
But, before coming to them, I would like to refer to
Ruxley Electronics and Construction Ltd v Forsyth
[1996] AC 344 . This was the case of the swimming
pool. The defendant had contracted to build for the
plaintiff a swimming pool of a specified depth. The
pool was not of that depth. The defendant had broken
his contract. The plaintiff was entitled to damages. The
value of his property was affected either not at all or
only marginally. The swimming pool was serviceable.
But the plaintiff was entitled to a deeper pool. The
prima facie measure of damages would have been the
cost of increasing the depth of the pool to the stipulated
depth—a considerable sum. But this sum was so
disproportionate that the courts refused to award it. It
would be unreasonable for the plaintiff to incur that
expense. His damages must be assessed at a lower
figure. The speech of Lord Mustill, at pp 359-361, is
illuminating. The loss is a reasonable valuation of what
the plaintiff ought to have had but did not get. It is not
just the amount (if any) by which his property has a
lower market value than that it would have had if the
contract had been performed. In the present case, by
1989, Blake's undertaking had no remaining value to
the Crown.
The question of negative covenants typically arise
in relation to land and covenants not to build. A
complication is that they usually involve a proprietary

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