Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/124

I04 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. Robinson v. Lord Byron ^ is generally cited as the earliest instance of a mandatory injunction. There a mandatory order was granted by Lord Chancellor Thurlow to restrain the defend- ant from preventing water flowing in regular quantities to the plaintiff's mill. The defendant could by means of stop-gates and flood-gates, maintained on his estates, prevent the water of the stream, on which the plaintiff's mill depended, from going to the mill in sufficient quantities for its operation, or inundate the plaintiff's land, which he had done on several occasions. He was restrained from permitting things to remain as they were. In Rankin v. Huskisson,^ a preliminary injunction was granted to restrain the defendant from building on part of a place adjacent to a plot leased to the plaintiff with a covenant that the ground adjoining the lot leased to him should be laid out and used as a garden, and no building whatever be erected thereon. In violation of this covenant the defendants commenced the erection of build- ings in the garden site. The injunction restrained the defendants from completing the houses, and from permitting such part of the buildings as had already been erected on the garden site to remain thereon, until, etc. In Blakemore v. The Glamorganshire Canal Navigation,^ Lord Chancellor Brougham intimated that on an interlocutory application for an injunction, the court will only act prospectively, and with a view to keep matters in statu quo, and will not, unless in a very special case, grant the order in such form as indirectly to compel some positive act to be done by the party enjoined. And he took occasion to remark that he agreed with the view that if the court has this jurisdiction, it would be better to execute it directly and at once. In the North of England Junction Railway Co. v. Clarence Rail- way Co.,* the defendant sought to prevent the plaintiff from con- structing a bridge over its railway tracks, as plaintiff was authorized to do by act of Parliament, by erecting walls in such a position as to interfere with the erection of the bridge and the crossing of the defendant's railway over the same. A mandatory temporary in- junction, in effect compelling the defendant to pull down these walls, so that plaintiff might proceed with the construction of its bridge, was granted by Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, who said: " It has been said that the injunction now sought is wholly man- 1 (1785) I Bro. C. C. 588. 2 (,830) 4 Sim. Rep. 13. 8 (1832) I Mylne & Keen, 154. * (1S44) i CoUyer's Rep. 507.