Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsrgv.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave
From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.legal
Subject: Re: More on rights
Message-ID: <390@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Nov-84 12:31:09 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.390
Posted: Thu Nov  1 12:31:09 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Nov-84 12:42:10 EST
References: <2644@rochester.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 47

In article <2644@rochester.UUCP> ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP writes:
||      There have been actors and actresses who
|| were forced to perform  to fulfill a contract
|| (Suzanne Somers had to put in at least cameo appearances in
|| some episodes of _Three's Company_ at the end of her
|| contract); baseball players have been ordered by courts
|| to play for particular teams, and so on.
|| 
Are you sure?

	"our Courts will not enforce a positive covenant
	 of personal service"
		Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. v. Nelson,
		[1937] 1 K.B. 209   (the Bette Davis case)

The general common-law rule on contracts is as follows: the party
in breach of contract must put the other party in as good a position
as if the contract had been fulfilled (Lord Atkinson's Rule). Specific
performance will be ordered if money cannot replace what is being lost.
However, the courts will not force an individual to provide specific
performance in services, precisely because we *are* free to do as we
wish with our bodies. This is true in British and Canadian common law,
and I would be surprised if it is not true in the U.S. also.

Note that there is a difference between a baseball player being ordered
not to play for any team other than X (which does happen) and a player
being ordered to play for team X (which I believe does not happen).
While the court will not force you to do <xyz> with your body, it
may prohibit you from doing certain things (which, if you are
a baseball player and want to play pro ball, may effectively have
the same result).

|| 
|| How about this for a situation where someone has to give up
|| his or her right to the sexual use of his or her body?:
||  ...  could not the man
|| be compelled by law to engage in sexual acts with her?

I don't think so. See the analogy above. The law on surrogate
mothers is developing along the same lines.


Dave Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
-- 
 { allegra cornell decvax ihnp4 linus utzoo }!utcsrgv!dave