Attorney General V Blake House of Lords

Attorney General v Blake, [2001] 1 A.C. 268 (2000)
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responsible for assisting in upholding the criminal law.
In this capacity it is open to him to apply for an
injunction. He sought, and after a further hearing the
court granted him, an interim injunction to restrain
the payment of the remaining royalty money (about
£90,000) to Blake. However, perhaps conscious that
this order might be open to criticism, the court in
its judgment tentatively raised a further possibility—
restitutionary damages.
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Blake has now appealed to your Lordships' House
against the grant of the injunction. Like all of your
Lordships, I agree that the grant of the injunction was
wrong and should be set aside. But the Crown has,
with your Lordships' encouragement and leave, cross-
appealed to make the private law claim to restitutionary
damages which it had previously declined to make.
Your Lordships have concluded that this claim should
be allowed.
I cannot join your Lordships in that conclusion. I
have two primary difficulties. The first is the facts
of the present case. The speech of my noble and
learned friend explores what is the "just response" to
the defendant's conduct. The "just response" visualised
in the present case is, however it is formulated, that
Blake should be punished and deprived of any fruits
of conduct connected with his former criminal and
reprehensible conduct. The Crown have made no
secret of this. It is not a commercial claim in support
of any commercial interest. It is a claim relating to past
criminal conduct. The way it was put by the Court of
Appeal [1998] Ch 439 , 464 was:
"The ordinary member of the public would be shocked
if the position was that the courts were powerless to
prevent [Blake] profiting from his criminal conduct."
The answer given by my noble and learned friend does
not reflect the essentially punitive nature of the claim
and seeks to apply principles of law which are only
appropriate where commercial or proprietary interests
are involved. Blake has made a financial gain but he
has not done so at the expense of the Crown or making
use of any property of or commercial interest of the
Crown either in law or equity.
My second difficulty is that the reasoning of my noble
and learned friend depends upon the conclusion that
there is some gap in the existing state of the law which
requires to be filled by a new remedy. He accepts that
the term "restitutionary damages" is unsatisfactory but,
with respect, does not fully examine why this is so,
drawing the necessary conclusions.
The cross-appeal has to be determined on the basis
that the only civil cause of action which the Crown
has against Blake is a bare legal cause of action in
contract for breach of contract in that he failed in 1989
to observe the negative undertaking which he gave in
1944. As already observed, it is recognised by Blake
that the Crown had at the least a good arguable case
for the grant of an injunction against him at that time.
In other words it was a breach of contract—breach
of a negative undertaking—liable to be restrained by
injunction, ie, specifically enforced.
But the Crown did not apply for an injunction at
the time it would have done some good and quite
probably stopped the publication of the book. This is
the source of the problems for the Crown in achieving
its purpose in bringing these proceedings. It cannot
say that it intends to prosecute Blake because it does
not expect that he will ever return to this country;
consequently it admits that it cannot say that it will
ever be in a position to make use of the provisions
of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Proceeds of
Crime Act 1995. It does not say that the payment of
the £90,000 by Jonathan Cape to Blake would amount
to the commission of any criminal offence by either
Jonathan Cape or Blake. It accepts that it has no direct
right of recourse against Jonathan Cape; it is confined
to claiming some public law or private law remedy
against Blake. It now accepts that its original claim
that it has equitable or fiduciary or proprietary rights
against 
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Blake cannot be sustained. It cannot
claim compensatory damages for breach of contract
because it has suffered no loss as a result of the
publication.

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