They tend to illustrate the qualities of equity, in contrast to the common law, as a more flexible, responsive approach to the needs of the individual, inclined to take into account the parties' conduct and worthiness.
If the policyholder has clearly been at fault in this connection, because, for example, he has not paid premiums when he should have, then it will normally be quite reasonable for an insurer to decline to meet the claim.
This was done without reference to the insurer concerned whose normal practice in such circumstances would have been to maintain coverage and to require payment of the full premium until proof of the no claims discount was forthcoming.
The United States' Bivens doctrine, however, has been sharply limited over time, such as in Egbert v. Boule (U.S. 2022), in favor of requiring causes of action to be explicitly authorized by statute.
The U.S. Supreme Court likewise stated in Root v. Railway Company (1881) that "it would be inequitable that [a wrongdoer] should make a profit out of his own wrong."
It compels restitution of property unconscientiously withheld; it gives full compensation for any loss or damage through failure of some equitable duty; but it has no power of punishing anyone."
This maxim flows from the fundamental notion of equality or impartiality due to the conception of Equity and is the source of many equitable doctrines.
This differs from a statute of limitations, in that a delay is particularized to individual situations, rather than a general prescribed legal amount of time.
[citation needed] Where a claimant is under an obligation to do one thing but does another, his action may be treated as close enough approximation of the required act.
Courts of law had jurisdiction over property as well as persons and their coercive power arose out of their ability to adjust ownership rights.
Their coercive power arose from the ability, on authority of the crown, to hold a violator in contempt, and take away his freedom (or money) until he purged himself of his contumacious behavior.
Rather, it means that they came to require that the applicant assert a right of some significant substance as opposed to a claim for relief based on an injury to mere emotional or dignitary interests.
As was inevitable, debtors would be unable to pay on the law day, and if they tendered the debt after the time had passed, the creditor owed no duty to give the land back.
And the equity courts granted these petitions quite regularly and often without regard for the amount of time that had lapsed since the law day had passed.
The lender could interpose a defense of laches, saying that so much time had gone by (and so much improvement and betterment had taken place) that it would be inequitable to require undoing the finality of the mortgage conveyance.
This unsettling system had a negative impact on the willingness of lenders to accept real estate as collateral security for loans.
Since a lender could not re-sell the property until it had been in uncontested possession for years, or unless it could show changed circumstances, the value of real estate collateral was significantly impaired.
In Graf v. Hope Building Corp.,[12] the New York Court of Appeals observed that in such a case, there was no forfeiture, only the operation of a clause fair on its face, to which the mortgagor had freely assented.
Of course, now that the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction, we can expect courts to explain where the limits on the newly expanded equity of redemption lie...and it is probably not a coincidence that the cases that have eroded Graf v. Hope Building Corp. have been accompanied by the rise of arbitration as a means for enforcing mortgages.
It would be an idle gesture for the court to grant reformation of a contract and then to deny to the prevailing party an opportunity to perform it as modified.
"[15] The defense of unclean hands only applies if there is a nexus between the applicant's wrongful act and the rights he wishes to enforce.
The decision to accept the money would not normally be binding in contract law, and afterwards the builders sued the Rees for the outstanding amount.
The Rees claimed that the court should apply the doctrine of promissory estoppel,[18] which can make promises binding even when unsupported by consideration.
However, Lord Denning refused to apply the doctrine, on the grounds that the Rees had taken unfair advantage of the builders' financial difficulties, and therefore had not come "with clean hands".
This maxim, also expressed as Aequitas sequitur legem, means more fully that "equity will not allow a remedy that is contrary to law."
"[20] According to Edmund Henry Turner Snell, "It is only when there is some important circumstance disregarded by the common law rules that equity interferes.
Restitution developed as a series of writs called special assumpsit, which were later additions in the courts of law, and were more flexible tools of recovery, based on equity.
However, there are certain relaxations to the maxim, including the rule of Re Rose of where the donor has "done all in his power to divest himself of and to transfer" the property,[27] and the more recent but controversial use of unconscionability as a method of dispensing a formality requirement.
[citation needed] The significance of this maxim is that applicants to the chancellors often did so because of the formal pleading of the law courts, and the lack of flexibility they offered to litigants.
[citation needed] Due to limits in old Common Law, no remedy was had for beneficiaries if, for example, a trustee ran off with the trust property.