Meaning: The maxim indicates the discipline which the Chancery Courts observed while administering justice according to conscience. The discretion of the court is governed by rules of law and equity. Equity does not oppose the law. Sometimes it follows the law. Equity generally takes place to provide remedy where the common law jurisdiction fails to sanction such remedy due to rigour of law and limitation of such law. Thus equity came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it, to supplement it, to explain it.
Equity respected every
word of law and every right at law but where the law was defective, in those
instances, these common law rights were controlled by recognition of equitable
rights and in other cases they were rendered more effective than they were at
common law by throwing open equitable remedies to their holders. According to
Snell, when there is some important circumstance disregarded by the Common Law
rules that equity interferes. Thus ‘equity follows the law, but not slavishly,
nor always.”
Application and Cases: As regards legal estates, rights and interests, equity was and is
strictly bound by the rules of law and it has no discretion to deviate
therefrom. At common law, where a person died intestate who owned an estate
leaving sons and daughters, the eldest son according to the rules of
primogeniture was entitled to the whole of the land to the exclusion of his
younger brothers and sisters. In the case of Stickland V. Aldridge, A person is
died leaving sons and daughters. He had owned an estate. According to the rule
of primogeniture, eldest son of that person entitled to the whole of the
estate. Though this was unfair, yet no relief was granted by the Equity Courts.
But in this case it was held that if the son had induced his father not to make
a will by agreeing to divide the estate with his brothers and sisters, equity
would have interfered and compelled him to carry out his promise. Equity
recognised and respected legal rules but the circumstance of giving of promise
by the son to the father had added an element of conscience to the rule which
equity must consider, because it acts on the conscience of a person. It was
held therefore that the son must take it as a trustee for himself and his
brothers and sisters. Thus where a court of law missed an important point,
equity corrected the law and followed it on the simple principle of conscience.
Limitation of the Maxim:
i.
Where a rule of law did not
specifically and clearly apply.
ii. Where even by analogy (same as legal fiction) the rule of law did not apply, equity formulated and applied its own rules, on the reason that injustice must be remedied.
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