Judgment
Lord Nicholls, Lord Goff of Chieveley, Lord Browne-Wilkinson and Lord Steyn held that in exceptional cases, when the normal remedy is inadequate to compensate for breach of contract, the court can order the defendant to account for all profits. This was an exceptional case. Blake had harmed the public interest. Publication was a further breach of his undertaking of confidentiality. Disclosure of non-confidential information was also a criminal offence under the Official Secrets Act 1911. An absolute rule against disclosure was necessary to ensure that the secret service was able to deal in complete confidence. It was in the Crown’s legitimate interest to ensure Blake did not benefit from revealing state information. The normal contractual remedies of damages, specific performance or injunction were not enough, and the publishers should pay any money owing to Blake to the Crown. Lord Hobhouse dissented. He would have held that since the information was no longer confidential, there could be no misuse of confidential information. Lord Nicholls at made the famous statement that estitution for breach of contract must be accepted in some situations. These situations may never be as exceptional as that which we are passing judgment on today, but notwithstanding this there is no other conclusion the court can reach.
Read more about this topic: Attorney General V Blake
Famous quotes containing the word judgment:
“A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)