COMMENTARIES ON EQUITY JURISPRUDENCE. CHAPTER XIX. COMPENSATION AND DAMAGES. [§ 794. Courts of equity do not commonly award damages. § 794 a. But will, for breach of duty in trustees and some other cases. § 795. Damages ascertained by reference to master, or jury. § 796-798. Will not award damages except as incidental to other relief, and where specific performance should be decreed. § 799. Other cases rest upon peculiar grounds, or involve fraud. § 794. IT is in cases of bills, brought for a specific performance, that questions principally (although not exclusively) arise, as to compensation and damages being awarded by courts of equity; and therefore it is convenient, in this place, to consider the nature and extent of the jurisdiction, exercised by courts of equity as to compensation and damages.1 It may be stated, as a general proposition, that, for breaches of contract, and other wrongs and injuries, cognizable at law, courts of equity do not entertain jurisdiction to give redress by way of compensation or damages, where these constitute the sole objects of the bill. For, wherever the matter of the bill is merely for damages, and there is a perfect remedy therefor at law, it is far better that they should be ascertained 1 The same principle of compensation and damages is applied in granting relief against penalties and forfeitures, as will be seen in a future page. And, by a jury than by the conscience of an equity judge. indeed, the just foundation of equitable jurisdiction fails in all such cases, as there is a plain, complete, and adequate remedy at law. Compensation or damages (it should seem) ought, therefore, ordinarily to be decreed in equity only as incidental to other relief sought by the bill, and granted by the court; 2 or where there is no adequate remedy at law; or, where some peculiar equity intervenes. Thus, for example, if, pending a suit for a specific performance of an agreement for a demise of quarries, a part of the subject-matter of the demise is abstracted, compensation may be obtained therefor by a supplemental bill.4 3 Gilbert, For. Roman. ch. 12, p. 219; Clifford v. Brooke, 13 Ves. 130, 131, 134; Blore v. Sutton, 3 Meriv. 247, 248; Newham v. May, 13 Price, 749, 752; Wiswall v. McGown, 2 Barb. 270; Shepard v. Sanford, 3 Barb. Ch. 127. 2 Lord Chief Baron Alexander, in Newham v. May (13 Price, 752), said: "The cases of compensation, in equity, I consider to have grown out of the jurisdiction of courts of equity, as exercised in respect to contracts for the purchase of real property, where it is often ancillary, as incidentally necessary to effectuate decrees of specific performance." And he added: "It is not in every case of fraud that relief is to be administered in equity. In the cases, for instance, of a fraudulent warranty on the sale of a horse, or any fraud in the sale of a chattel, no one, I apprehend, ever thought of filing a bill in equity." Ante, § 779. 3 Newham v. May, 13 Price, 732; Ranelaugh v. Hayes, 1 Vern. 189; ante, § 711. Nelson v. Bridges, 2 Beavan, 239. In this case Lord Langdale said: “It has already been declared that the plaintiff is entitled to a specific performance of the agreement; but, pending the proceedings, the very subject of the agreement, to which the plaintiff has by the decree been declared entitled, has been abstracted. The stone, or a quantity of the stone, which the plaintiff had obtained a license to quarry, has actually been taken away by the defendant Wordsworth; so that while the performance of the agreement has been resisted and delayed by the defendants, they, or one of them at least, has taken away a portion of the very subject-matter of the suit, and the plaintiff has been thereby for ever deprived of the full benefit of his contract. If that circumstance had been known at the first hearing, I cannot have the least doubt but that the court would, in the exercise of its jurisdiction, have put in a due course of investigation the question of the amount of compensation which ought to be made to the plaintiff. This matter, it appears, was not brought to the attention of the court at that time, and a supplemental bill is now filed by the plaintiff, for the purpose of obtaining compensation. It is said that such compensation might originally have been had at law; or, if not, that at least it might have been obtained at law, by perfecting the decree for the specific performance of the agreement in some particular form. I am of opinion that it is not necessary for this court, when it has once entertained jurisdiction in a case, to resort to that circuitous mode of giving |