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A legal remedy, also referred to as judicial relief or a judicial remedy, is the means with which a court of law, usually in the exercise of civil law jurisdiction, enforces a right, imposes a penalty, or makes another court order to impose its will in order to compensate for the harm of a wrongful act inflicted upon an individual.
In common law jurisdictions and mixed civil-common law jurisdictions, the law of remedies distinguishes between a legal remedy (e.g. a specific amount of monetary damages) and an equitable remedy (e.g. injunctive relief or specific performance). Another type of remedy available in these systems is declaratory relief, where a court determines the rights of the parties to Lawsuit without awarding damages or ordering equitable relief. The type of legal remedies to be applied in specific cases depend on the nature of the wrongful act and its liability. In international human rights law, there is a right to an effective remedy.
In the legal system of the United States, there exists a traditional form of judicial remedies that serve to combat juror biases caused by news coverage. The First Amendment of the United States forbids the government from censoring and restraining the freedom of expression, which allows the ever-expanding news media to influence the legal process. The entangled relationship between mass media and the legal system presents challenges to the Sixth Amendment that guarantees the rights of criminal defendants to receive fair trials. Trial-level remedies are in place to avoid pretrial publicity from affecting the fairness of a trial. To minimize the impacts of pretrial publicity, there are six kinds of judicial remedies at the disposal of judges: voir dire, change of venue, change of veniremen, continuance, admonition, sequestration.
In England and American jurisprudence, there is a legal maxim (albeit one sometimes honored in the breach) that for every right, there is a remedy; where there is no remedy, there is no right. That is, lawmakers claim to provide appropriate remedies to protect rights. This legal maxim was first enunciated by William Blackstone: "It is a settled and invariable principle in the laws of England, that every right when with-held must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress."1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 23 See also Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 162–163 (1803). In addition to the United Kingdom and the United States, legal remedy is a concept widely practiced in the legal system of a variety of countries, though approached differently.
Compensatory damages are paid directly to the claimant to compensate for loss and injury when the defendant is proven to be liable for breach of duty or committing wrongful acts. In cases where the claimant has suffered ascertainable costs, it is easy to determine the amount of compensatory damages. In other cases where the liability results from the defendant failing to perform a service, it is necessary to calculate compensatory damages by inquiring how much it would cost for a third party to provide the same service. However, the court takes into account when the non-breaching party makes savings or profits because he or she is involuntarily relieved from the responsibilities specified in a broken contract. If the non-breaching party makes gains from alternative arrangements, compensatory damages are equivalent to his or her loss subtracted by the gains made from the substitution.
Consequential damages, also known as special damages, are intended to compensate for the indirect consequences incurred by the defendant and are sanctioned on a case-by-case basis due to their specificity. Lost profits make up a common type of consequential damages in contract laws. When the party breaching a contract causes the plaintiff to lose profits, the money is recoverable if the plaintiff can prove its ascertainment and trace it to the wrongful conduct of the breaching party, which can be extremely difficult. Moreover, legal expenses including the ones generated by bringing a lawsuit against the breaching party to attain legal remedies do not count toward consequential damages and be charged from the defendant, unless stated in the contract otherwise.
Punitive damages are different from other types of damages because their main purpose is to punish the defendant and deter him or her and many others from engaging in similar kinds of unlawful conduct in the future. The maliciousness and willingness of the defendant to carry out certain wrongful acts are typically what compel the court to impose punitive damages. Since the intention of punitive damages is typically not to compensate the plaintiff, it is often that only a part of it would be awarded to the plaintiff at the discretion of judges and that they serve only as complements to compensatory damages.
Incidental damages, closely associated with compensatory damages, are costs used to prevent further losses that result from the breach of contract on behalf of the nonbreaching party. For example, a company breaches a hiring contract that it signed with a prospective employee. The expenditures that the employee spent searching for another job are an element of incidental damages.
The plaintiff is entitled to receive Nominal Damages in cases in which there is no actual harm or the plaintiff is unable to prove harm. Although the amount of nominal damages is typically small, the plaintiff can use the award of nominal damages as a justification to plead for punitive awards or appeal a violation of his or her rights that form the basis of the lawsuit, common in cases involving constitutional rights.
Liquidated damages refer to a predetermined amount of money that must be paid by the breaching party, and they are fixed numbers agreed upon by both parties during the formation of a contract. Courts enforcing a liquidated damages provision would consider the reasonableness of its amount, specifically if it approximates the amount of actual damages caused, and the ascertain. Failing to meet this condition would turn liquidated damages into an unenforceable penalty that inequitably benefits the party receiving liquidated awards.
In certain cases, a statute dictates the amount of damages, rather than the calculation of the harm or loss endured by the plaintiff. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act would charge up to $1,000 for every violation of its provision, which is an example of statutory damages. Treble damages is a type of statutory damages in which the amount of compensatory damages awarded to a plaintiff can be tripled given the warranty of a statute.
Injunction is a court order that coerces the defendant to take specific acts or refrains him or her from engaging in certain actions, e.g., breaching a contract. In the U.S., injunction is the most common type of equitable remedies, and failure to comply with an injunction can lead to results ranging from fines to imprisonment.
Accounting for profits is an inquiry into the amount of gains that the defendant benefited from his or her wrongs. Accounting is more commonly practiced in cases against a fiduciary or breach of contract in which the ascertainment of the defendant's profits is important.
Constructive trust is enforced in situations where the possession of a property by the defendant unjustly enriches him or her, and therefore the court decides to grant the ownership of the property to the plaintiff.
Lien is applicable when the defendant used unjust funds obtained from the plaintiff to make improvements to his or her property. By granting the plaintiff a security interest in the property of the defendant, it guards the right of the plaintiff to have the funds returned from the defendant.
In a subrogation case, the property that belongs to the plaintiff from a legal standpoint is used by the defendant to repay the debt to a third party. Subrogation entitles the plaintiff to the rights as the third party against the defendant.
Specific performance refers to the court compelling the defendant to perform certain actions. This type of equitable remedy is limited in scope because in contract laws for example, issuing specific performance would require the property that gives rise to the lawsuit to be unique, or that it is more practical for the defendant to compensate the plaintiff by paying for compensatory damages.
Reformation, or referred to as rectification, is when the court practices remedies by correcting the writings of a contract. Under two circumstances, reformation applies either when (1) the writing does not reflect the agreement made between the parties, or (2) one party signed the contract in the first place because of manipulation by fraud planned and executed by the other party.
Equitable rescission gives the innocent plaintiff the right to undo or rescind a contract when the plaintiff entered the contract as a result of fraud, misrepresentation, etc., or when the contract has been breached by the other party. To restore the situation to what it was before the contract, both parties need to return what they have received from the exchange.
is a French word meaning "to come."
Equitable remedies, which may include:
Declaratory remedies
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