Wrotham Park Estate Co Ltd v Parkside Homes Ltd

Wrotham Park Estate Co Ltd v Parkside Homes Ltd [1974] 1 WLR 798 (/ˈruːtəm/) is an English land law and English contract law case, concerning the measure and availability of damages for breach of negative covenant in circumstances where the court has confirmed that a covenant is legally enforceable and refused, as unconscionable, to issue an order for specific performance or an injunction.

Wrotham Park (pronounced /ˈruːtəm/) is an estate owned and lived in for generations by gentry and then nobility including the Earl of Strafford.

The damages were measured as the amount that might reasonably have been demanded by the plaintiff as payment for relaxing the covenant, being 5% of the developer's anticipated profit.

He refused to make an order to demolish the houses built, preferring to award damages under Lord Cairns' Act, saying: ... the defendants argue that the damages are nil or purely nominal, because the value of the Wrotham Park Estate as the plaintiffs concede is not diminished by one farthing in consequence of the construction of a road and the erection of 14 houses on the allotment site.

If, for social and economic reasons, the court does not see fit in the exercise of its discretion, to order demolition of the 14 houses, is it just that the plaintiffs should receive no compensation and that the defendants should be left in undisturbed possession of the fruits of their wrongdoing?

A relatively small housing estate during construction