Injunction to perform negative agreement :

Section 42 provides that notwithstanding anything contained in clause (e) of Section 41, where a contract comprises an affirmative agreement to do a certain act, coupled with negative agreement, express or implied, not to do a certain act, the circumstance that the Court is unable to compel specific performance of the affirmative agreement shall not preclude it from granting an injunction to perform the negative agreement, provided that the plaintiff has not failed to perform the contract so far as it is binding on him.

Conditions necessary for the applicability of this Section are:

(1) The contract should comprise of two agreements, one affirmative and another negative.

(2) Both the agreements must be divisible.

(3) The negative agreement must relate to a specific act.

(4) The Court should be unable to compel specific performace of the affirmative agreement.

(5) The plaintiff must not have failed to perform the contract, so far as it is binding upon him.

A negative stipulation may be express or implied. An express negative stipulation in one where the negative stipulation is put expressly. The Section does not say that every affirmative contract includes by necessary implication a negative agreement to refrain from doing certain things. It is therefore a question of interpretation in each case to find whether a particular contract can be said to have a negative stipulation, express or implied, contained in it, e.g., the mere use of word “exclusively” does not imply a negative stipulation to refrain from service of other people.

The provisions of this Section are based on the equitable principle that “he who seeks equity must do equity”.

The principle as laid down in Section 42 was followed in the cases of Burn Mcdonald (1907) 36 Cal 354; Metropolitan Electric Supply v. Ginder, (1901) 2 Ch. 799; Subba Naidu v. Hari Badshah, (13 M.L.J. 13); and Madras Rly Co. v. Rust, (1891) 14 Mad 18.