Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/380

 The rule in equity being, however, as stated above, it often happens that bills for specific performance are filed by parties who have themselves broken the contracts on which they sue; and as often as this is the case the question arises whether the plaintiff’s breach goes to the essence or not. In case of an obligation merely to pay money, a breach can never go to the essence, as interest on the money is always, in legal contemplation, full compensation for the breach. Therefore, a purchaser of land can never lose the right to specific performance by a mere breach of the contract, though he may easily lose it by delay or laches. In case of an obligation to give a specified thing, a breach by the plaintiff may consist either in a failure to give the thing on the day when by the contract it is due, or in a failure to give some portion of it at all, or to give it in the condition in which it was agreed to be given. A breach of the first kind is a breach in time merely, and generally such a breach does not go to the essence. For example, it is not presumably of vital importance to the purchaser of an estate whether he get the estate to-day or to-morrow, or even whether he get it this year or next. It is always open, however, to a purchaser to show that he purchased the estate with a particular object in view, which object was known to the seller, and that that object has been defeated by the seller’s delay in performing the contract; and then the seller’s breach will go to the essence. So time may, it seems, be of the essence of a contract for the purchase and sale of property from the nature of the property, e.g., where the property is constantly diminishing in value, as a life interest, or constantly increasing in value, as a reversionary interest. So if a contract contain an express declaration that time shall be of its essence, such declaration will be binding upon the court; for the only ground upon which a court can hold that any given breach does not go to the essence (or rather, perhaps, that any given breach of an implied condition by the plaintiff does not disable him from enforcing the contract against the defendant) is the intention of the parties, actual or presumed. Such a declaration has, therefore, the same effect as that of making the performance of the contract by each party expressly conditional upon its performance by the other party.

It is often said that time is not of the essence of a contract in equity, as if equity differed from law in that respect; but that is a mistake. Whatever is of the essence of a contract at law is