Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/378

 if a vendor, who has contracted to convey the fee-simple, have only an estate for life or lives, or for years, the amount which ought to be deducted from the purchase-money, on account of the defect of title, can be ascertained without difiiculty. But where the defect in the vendor’s title is of such a nature that there are no definite data by which to estimate the amount that ought to be deducted from the purchase-money on account of it, the vendee will not be entitled to specific performance, except upon the terms of paying the full amount of the purchase-money.

A vendor may be unable fully to perform his contract in consequence of something that has happened to the property since the making of the contract, as where the subject of sale is land and buildings, and, after the making of the contract, the buildings are destroyed by fire. In such a case the vendee will be entitled, at his option, to have a conveyance of the land, with a deduction from the purchase-money of the relative value of the buildings.

Are there any cases in which a plaintiff, who cannot recover on a contract at law, can nevertheless have a specific performance in equity? To say that there are such cases would seem at first sight to be equivalent to saying that a plaintiff who has no legal right may sometimes recover in equity upon the ground that he has a legal right. The law may, however, refuse to recognize a right, because, if a right were recognized, the law would have no adequate means of enforcing it, or no means of enforcing it without giving the plaintiff more than he would be entitled to, and thus doing injustice to the defendant; and, in such a case, if the reason why the law refuses to recognize the right does not exist in equity, the right may be recognized in equity without any violation of law, though in strictness the right will then be equitable,—not legal. At all events,there is an important class of cases in which equity, rightly or wrongly, gives relief to the party in whom the legal right created by the contract is vested, though, confessedly, such party could not recover in an action at law. The cases referred to are those in which, the contract being bilateral, the covenant or promise of the defendant is subject to the implied condition that the plaintiff’s covenant or promise shall be performed either before the defendant’s or concurrently with it. If the condition be express, and the plaintiff break his covenant or promise (i.e., break the condition on which the defendant’s