When, if ever, may a court award damages to a plaintiff whose case sounds only in equity, not in law? In Hooper v. Rogers an award of damages in respect of a nuisance which had not yet resulted in any relevant damage was upheld by the Court of Appeal. In Wrotham Park Estate Co. Ltd. v. Parkside Homes Ltd. Brightman J. awarded substantial damages for breach of a restrictive covenant to the successors in title of the covenantee against the successors in title of the covenantor. In Wroth v. Tyler damages for the non-performance of a contract for the sale of a house were assessed by reference to the value of the house at the date of the hearing, not the date of breach. In none of these cases could the decisions have been justified on common law principles alone and all are in fact founded upon the Chancery Amendment Act 1858, commonly known as Lord Cairns' Act. Yet in Redland Bricks Ltd. v. Morris, while the Court of Appeal considered that an elaborate discussion of that Act was necessary and, indeed, differed in opinion as to the result of its application to the circumstances of the case, the House of Lords, through Lord Upjohn, dismissed the matter briefly and categorically with the observation that Lord Cairns' Act had nothing whatever to do with the principles of law applicable to the case. The time seems ripe for an examination of the meaning and present status of the Act.

By mid-1973 the Watergate scandal was reaching towards the highest levels of the United States' Administration. Elliot Richardson was nominated as Attorney General with a particular mandate to sort out the affair. The Senate Judiciary Committee, in its hearings on Richardson's nomination, was vitally concerned to ensure that the Office of Watergate Special Prosecutor should have maximum effectiveness and independence. The formula eventually agreed upon was promulgated by the Attorney General as a regulation under powers vested in him by Statute to prescribe regulations for the Justice Department. On the question of independence, it provided:

… The Special Prosecutor will carry out these responsibilities with the full support of the Department of Justice, until such time as, in his judgment, he has completed them or until a date mutually agreed upon between the Attorney General and himself. … The Special Prosecutor will not be removed from his duties except for extraordinary improprieties on his part.

It is almost a matter of definition that law restricts the freedom of each individual to satisfy his wants and desires in any manner he wishes. The restrictive elements in law may be regarded as justifiable because and in so far as they are necessary to ensure the maximum freedom for each and every individual. Freedom from interference can only be preserved by restricting everyone's freedom to exercise power over others. Perhaps the most fundamental and universal restriction is that placed on the use of force by one individual against another. Widely as social and legal systems may vary in the extent to which they allow some forms of power (e.g., economic power, industrial power, the powers of persuasion) to be exercised, they unite in prohibiting the exercise of physical power by one citizen against another. Many natural inequalities may be allowed to run free, but all legal systems attempt to “equalise” human beings to the extent of preventing resort to force by those who are minded and able to use this method of satisfying their desires. A prohibition on the use of force may thus be regarded as one of the minimum conditions of social life. This, in turn, is bound up with recognition of the right to life and physical security as the most basic claim of every human being. The idea of physical security as one of the “natural rights” of mankind has a long history, and Blackstone followed this traditions when he held that the right to life and limb is an “absolute right” which “every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it.”

The practice of “lifting the veil” from the modern company seems at times to be regarded as a sign that corporate personality is a ficition. This view is hardly logical: if the personality of the company were a ficition, there would be no veil to lift, the liability of the company must be the liability of the members, and limited liability must be an illusion. It is precisely because the legal personality of the company is real that special arrangements must be made for lifting the veil of this personality when it conceals the wrongdoing of a member or director. To use a more florid metaphor, when the powerful hoofs of the pantomime horse are used for improper kicking. Back Legs will be stripped of his protective covering, and made to account for his use of an engine of destruction more powerful than his own boots—on exactly the same principle as if he were made to account for his use of a natural horse's to cause damage. It makes no difference whether he sits on the horse's back or stands inside its skin; and it makes no difference to the man's liability for wrongful use of the horse whether the horse has a legal personality or not. (It may of course make a difference to what the victim does about it, since he may have good reasons for choosing to sue the horse rather than the man.)