Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/117

MANDATORY INJUNCTIONS. 97 based on sound principles, and beneficent results follow their en- forcement, affording necessary relief to the one party without impos- ing illegal burdens on the other, new remedies and unprecedented orders are not unwelcome to the Chancellor to meet the constantly varying demands for equitable relief." The duty of a court of equity to devise new remedies and to ex- tend its aid to meet new emergencies is recognized also in Joy v. St. Louis,^ in these words : " It is one of the most useful functions of a court of equity that its methods of procedure are capable of being made such as to accommodate themselves to the develop- ment of the interests of the public, in the progress of trade and traffic, by new methods of intercourse and transportation. And Mr. Justice Brewer is quoted by Judge Ricks as saying, " I believe most thoroughly that the powers of a court of equity are as vast, and its processes and procedure as elastic, as all the changing emergencies of increasingly complex relations and the protection of rights can demand."^ It is not intended in this paper to deal with the remedy of in- junction generally. Every lawyer is often called upon to invoke that remedy, and early in his practice becomes acquainted with the general principles controlling its application and ultimate efficiency. We are to deal here with the most efficient of all forms of injunc- tions, viz. : — • Mandatory Injunctions. A mandatory injunction is one that commands a party, plaintiff or defendant, to perform a certain act or acts. It is singular that while courts of equity have frequently granted this particular remedy, they seem, nevertheless, to have stood, at all times, in a sort of dread respecting it, and to have viewed it with a kind of prejudice ; so much indeed that we find it stated by eminent judges, as we shall see, that a temporary injunction in mandatory form is not to be granted at all. The form adopted at an early day for injunctions of this sort was negative instead of positive. It restrained the defendant from per- mitting a condition of affairs which he had wrongfully brought about, occasioned or suffered to exist, from continuing any longer; and this compelled him to do the acts necessary to bring about a discontinuance of the wrongful state of things produced by him, 1 (1890) 138 U. S. I, 50. 2 See 54 Fed. Rep. 751.