Samuel Bray | 1.18.2024 11:52 AM

This is the second in a series of posts about the revision that is in the works for Ames, Chafee, and Re on Remedies. (The previous post is here.)

Chapter 1 offers a kind of microcosm of the revisions in Ames, Chafee, and Re on Remedies. The introduction lays out different types of remedies, the goal of remedies (the plaintiff's rightful position), and equity as a central idea in the law of remedies.

There are four cases in the first chapter. The first case has the job of introducing the central question of remedies–how do we put the plaintiff in the position he or she would have been in without the legal violation? The last three cases work through different senses of "equity" (Riggs v. Palmer, Cardozo's dissent in Graf, and Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo).

On the whole, it's a very effective chapter, putting key concepts front and center while leaving the details for later chapters. But the first case, Valco Cincinnati, Inc., needed to be changed. It's a trade secret case, and the remedy is an injunction. That means that all four cases in the introductory chapter are about equity, in one sense or another. (And that was true before I joined the book three editions ago.) So the first case really should be about damages.

I substituted Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. Southern Pacific Co., a 1925 U.S. Supreme Court decision in admiralty. It's all about the the value of a ship. In paragraph two it lays out some basic principles: "It is fundamental in the law of damages that the injured party is entitled to compensation for the loss sustained. Where property is destroyed by wrongful act, the owner is entitled to its........

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