Legal remedy

When someone suffers harm from a wrongful act, a court can step in using what is called a legal remedy—also known as judicial relief or a judicial remedy. This is the tool a court uses, typically in civil law cases, to enforce a right, impose a penalty, or issue an order that compensates for the injury. In places that follow common law or a mix of common and civil law, remedies are split into three main types. The first is a legal remedy, which usually means a specific amount of money, like damages. The second is an equitable remedy, such as an injunction or an order for specific performance. The third is declaratory relief, where the court simply states what the legal rights of the parties are, without awarding money or ordering any action. Which remedy applies depends on the nature of the wrongful act and who is liable. Under international human rights law, people have a right to an effective remedy.

In the United States, judges have special remedies to deal with juror bias caused by news coverage. The First Amendment stops the government from censoring speech, which lets the media influence legal proceedings. This creates tension with the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees criminal defendants a fair trial. To reduce the impact of pretrial publicity, six trial-level remedies are available: voir dire (questioning potential jurors), change of venue (moving the trial), change of veniremen (bringing in jurors from elsewhere), continuance (delaying the trial), admonition (warning the jury), and sequestration (isolating the jury).

A long-standing legal maxim in English and American law says that for every right, there is a remedy; if there is no remedy, there is no right. This idea, first stated by William Blackstone, holds that lawmakers should provide proper remedies to protect rights. While the United Kingdom and the United States follow this principle, legal remedies are used in many countries, though each approaches them differently.

In common law systems, the three main categories of judicial remedies have distinct origins. Legal remedies come from England’s law courts and typically involve money payments, called damages or replevin. Damages aim to compensate the victim for harm caused by a breach. Historically, legal remedies were only monetary, so victims had to use a separate system for other forms of compensation. Even though courts have merged, the distinction between asking for money and asking for action remains. Non-monetary compensation falls under equitable remedies, which came from the English Court of Chancery and Court of Exchequer. Declaratory remedies form the third category. Unlike the others, they involve a court deciding how the law applies to specific facts without ordering anyone to do anything. Courts use declaratory remedies for questions like legal status, property ownership, the meaning of a statute, or rights under a contract. Beyond these three, there are other remedies, such as reformation and rescission, which deal with contracts that need to be rewritten or undone.

Within legal remedies, damages come in several forms. Compensatory damages are paid directly to the claimant to cover loss or injury when the defendant is found liable. If the claimant has clear costs, the amount is easy to set. When the defendant failed to perform a service, the court calculates damages by figuring out what a third party would charge to do the same job. The court also considers any savings or profits the non-breaching party made because they were freed from the broken contract. If they gained from alternative arrangements, compensatory damages are reduced by those gains.

Consequential damages, also called special damages, cover indirect losses caused by the defendant. These are decided case by case because they are specific. Lost profits are a common example in contract law. If a breach causes the plaintiff to lose profits, those can be recovered if the plaintiff can prove the loss and link it to the breach—which is often very hard. Legal expenses from suing the breaching party are not counted as consequential damages and cannot be charged to the defendant unless the contract says otherwise.

Punitive damages serve a different purpose: their main goal is to punish the defendant.