Specific performance may be barred where the promisee accepts compensation and money relief is adequate under contract and relief law.

Section 63 of the Indian Contract Act allows a promisee to remit performance or accept substituted satisfaction, and the surrounding correspondence and conduct supported an inference that the plaintiff had been willing to take compensation instead of insisting on performance. The plaintiff's withholding of the covering letter justified an adverse inference, weakening the claim to specific performance. Under Sections 12 and 21(a) of the Specific Relief Act, specific performance is unavailable where pecuniary compensation is adequate, and the plaintiff's own willingness to accept damages showed that money relief could sufficiently redress the loss. The stated principle is that accepted or willing substitution by compensation, together with adequate monetary remedy, bars specific performance.

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Issues: (i) whether the plaintiff had dispensed with the defendant's performance of the contract and agreed to accept compensation in lieu of specific performance; (ii) whether, on the facts, pecuniary compensation was adequate relief so as to bar specific performance.

Issue (i): whether the plaintiff had dispensed with the defendant's performance of the contract and agreed to accept compensation in lieu of specific performance.

Analysis: Section 63 of the Indian Contract Act permits the promisee to remit performance or accept any satisfaction in place of it. The surrounding correspondence, the suppression of the plaintiff's covering letter, and the conduct of the plaintiff's son supported the inference that the plaintiff was willing at one stage to accept damages instead of insisting on performance. In the absence of the plaintiff's own evidence, the adverse inference from the withheld letter was accepted.

Conclusion: the plaintiff had dispensed with performance and was not entitled to insist upon specific performance as of right.

Issue (ii): whether, on the facts, pecuniary compensation was adequate relief so as to bar specific performance.

Analysis: Under Section 12 and Section 21(a) of the Specific Relief Act, specific performance is unavailable where money compensation is adequate. Although immovable property ordinarily attracts a presumption in favour of specific performance, that presumption may be displaced. The plaintiff's own willingness to accept Rs. 4,000 as compensation showed that damages could adequately redress the loss, and the defendant's asserted hardship did not create a ground to enforce specific performance where the contract was otherwise unobjectionable.

Conclusion: damages were adequate relief and specific performance was properly refused.

Final Conclusion: the decree refusing specific performance was sustained, with only a modification granting interest on the monetary compensation, and the appeal failed in substance.

Ratio Decidendi: where the promisee has accepted or is shown to have been willing to accept compensation in substitution for performance, and the evidence establishes that money compensation is adequate, specific performance cannot be decreed.

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