Enforcement of Personal Service Contracts in the Entertainment Industry

Abstract

F THE entertainment industry can rightfully claim the parentage of any single set of legal principles, those principles are the ones that a court of equity uses today in aiding employer's demand for specific performance of contracts for personal service by public performers. Many of these principles, it is true, are found interlaced among the broad, general rules and maxims that govern all suits in equity. Among the working rules which govern the discretion of equity in each of these cases are found an insistence upon the readiness and ability of the employer to perform, the requirement that the contract be not oppressive nor unconscionable, that it was not entered into by mistake and that the employer himself comes into equity with clean hands. But the single, well-accepted principle that, under appropritate circumstances, equity will enjoin the breach of a covenant in an artiste's contract not to perform for others, can be traced back directly to the landmark case of Lumley v. Wagner,' decided 101 years ago. The seed sown by Lumley v. Wagner has blossomed forth fully in the modern day entertainment contract. This is especially so in the motion picture field where the contracts between performers and their studios contain many elaborate provisions designed to insure the employer that the employee will perform for him, and for no one else.2 Briefly summarized,