I don’t know where this goes, since I want to ask a factual law question about a situation in a book. I think the law part trumps the other things, but please move if this should go somewhere else.
(Very mild spoilers for The Fountainhead.)
In The Fountainhead, in 1934, the architect Peter Keating signs a contract with the government to build a housing development (Cortlandt) that specifies the government must build it exactly to the plans he (well, Roark) gives them. The government doesn’t abide by this contract and puts all kinds of doohickeys on the plans that weren’t there before (and builds the doohickeys instead of the original plans). Keating is told he has no chance in suing the government, and doesn’t. (And this precipitates the rest of the action in the book.)
But… wouldn’t Keating able to take the government to court and win, given that they clearly didn’t abide by the contract?
I guess I have a number of questions on this score:
Is “You must build exactly according to these plans, otherwise don’t build at all” something that can be legitimately put into a contract with the government? (Let’s lay aside the question of whether the government would accept a contract like that — which is doubtful, I suspect, from what I know of the government.)
If the government didn’t abide by the contract, would Keating be able to win a suit against it?
Would Keating be able to specify that instead of (or in addition to) damages, he wants the original conditions of the contract, that is, for the buildings to be built according to the original plans?
At which point would the suit be brought? Would they actually have to start building something that wasn’t according to the plans in order for Keating to sue? What if he had the plans of what they were intending to build?
My googling seems to indicate that, if this situation were to happen today, the answers to 1-3 would be yes, and that Keating would be able to ask for “specific performance” restitution, although it’s not clear to me if the court would grant it in this case. Is this correct? What about in 1934, was there anything different between then and now?
(I’m not at all interested in the philosophy of the thing, just in whether the actual law involved makes any sense.)
I wonder what kind of contracts are signed by the universities and museums who build Starchitect projects.
But obviously, the simple answer is that in this specific fictional case the government wanted a housing project, not a work of art, so they would never agree to hamstring their requirements for the vanity of an architect. It’s beyond ridiculous unless you’re dealing with a famous architect and a prominent project.
IANAL. This is just what I recall from training in military acquisitions, plus google/wikipedia
The US government, on principle, has sovereign immunity. A citizen can’t sue the government unless the government consents. Consent is statutory, embodied in an act of Congress authorizing that certain causes of action between the government and citizens can be adjudicated in certain courts. The Tucker Act of 1887 seems applicable, because it waives sovereign immunity with respect to contracts between citizens and the government, including breach of contract.
ETA: This is US-centric. I can’t remember enough Rand to recall if The Fountainhead was set in the US, but I’m assuming for the sake of not invalidating my post that it was.
Yes, I agree the government would never sign such a contract in the first place. (It’s handwaved in the book that Roark/Keating is the only one who can meet the project requirements cost-wise. In real life, I imagine the contract stuff would be a sticking point even worse than not being able to meet the requirements.) But if they did sign, what recourse does Keating have?
Ahhh, that’s useful. So it sounds like since 1887 you could sue for breach of contract. But I guess it might be hard to get specific performance restitution (as opposed to damages)?
Of course, the specific legal question about ability to sue might depend on exactly what ‘Government’ signed the contract (U.S. Federal, a particular U.S. State, Canadian Province, etc.?), and even what particular agency or subdivision.
But anyway, without fighting the hypothetical, I am trying to imagine what kind of damages Keating could claim if such a contract was breached. I mean, I assume the contract included as the main benefit for Keating, a big cash money payment, right? What else did he want out of the contract that he could claim he didn’t get?
Would he be arguing that his reputation is horribly sullied by his professional name being associated with the monstrosity that the government ended up building? OK, maybe that’s a fair point, but it seems like the restitution in that case is something like the Government agreeing to put up a sign or two in the lobby of the building, and buy an ad in Architecture Snob Weekly saying “Hey, the Peoria Housing Authority totally did not realize Keating’s wonderful vision, which was really great. We made the horrible esthetic choices, not him. He’ll do great architecture work for you, if you don’t mind his micromanaging ways.”
I mean, after that, he’s gotten more publicity than if Peoria had built it to original plans, so he’s really come out ahead.
If there’s a different particular damage that Keating is suffering or suffered from the breach of the contract, there might be other remedies, but it’s hard to imagine one where a judge would order re-building everything. A sculpture or something, where there’s no intrinsic benefit other than the esthetics, and isn’t that costly to rebuilt, sure I could see a court order to install in according to the artist’s direction. But rebuild a housing development because the architect didn’t like the moldings or something?
One problem with the lawsuit idea is that Roark didn’t have a contract with the government, Keating did, but Keating’s contract was fraudulent because he claimed to be the architect when it was really Roark. It’s very likely that any legal case trying to enforce the contract would get tossed based on that issue alone. Beyond that, I can’t see what damages either of them could sue for - I don’t think specific performance would be the solution here, because I don’t think the contract is between Keating and the government to complete the work to a specification, and because it would be excessively expensive to rebuild the buildings. Ignoring the fraud, Roark/Keating could sue to get his name taken off of the credits for the building and for some possible financial compensation, but nothing that would satisfy Roark’s ego.
If you think about it, the philosophy of intellectual property rights that Rand endorses is pretty extreme - use my design in a way I don’t approve of, and I get to blow up your building.
It’s actually a lot simpler than that, really. “Do what I want or I can do whatever I want in retribution, because I’m superior to you and unbound by your petty ethics and law.”
To me the case seems analogous to a movie director who may have been contractually promised a certain amount of creative control only to have the studio renege on editing days or post production work and rush the film into opening. The remedy the directors have had is mostly symbolic. They’ve been able to remove their names from the work, going with a Directors Guild of America approved pseudonym, most famously, Alan Smithee.
I suspect Keating would have been successful in removing his firm’s name from the project, but he would not have been able to enforce design considerations.
Hm, that’s a good point about the fraudulent nature of the contract.
Heh, yeah. It has occurred to me that it’s in some sense an intellectual property rights question. And as you say… Rand’s view on it is pretty extreme. But now, putting Keating himself aside, is there any way that Roark can, I dunno, claim intellectual property on his designs and not let them be used in a way he doesn’t approve of, if he uses the right language? Bill Door’s response seems to imply the answer is no.
(I’m mostly trying to figure out if there’s any way that this could be solved by law, but it’s starting to look like the answer is no.)
OK, I don’t have any actual legal training, so this is all just an interested layman’s understanding after a few minutes on Google. It looks like there wasn’t much copyright protection for buildings in the 1930s, as the serious protections came in 1976 and 1990. Using the modern laws since they’re easier to research, there isn’t anything in modern copyright or contract law that allows the destruction of a building as a remedy. Using copyright law he could certainly keep his name off of the project, but he could get that by not saying anything since Keating’s name was on the project. He could get up to $150,000 per infringement under today’s laws, which would be $8,815 in 1936 dollars, but I don’t think that around $10,000 per infringement would satisfy a guy who didn’t even want money for the project.
From the Wiki article, “Second, owners of a copyrighted building may both make or authorize the making of alterations to the building and destroy or authorize destruction of the building.[14] Thus, the architect will not have the right to prevent the owner of a house that he or she designed from altering or destroying the building. This exception also allows owners of partially complete buildings to complete the building using construction plans created by the architect.[15]” I think that answers pretty clearly that the government would be in the clear to modify the building.
Correct; specific performance is unavailable against the US government. I don’t have an easy citation (because the rule is so well-established that no one seeks such relief), but here are twoarticles. (pdf)
So let’s presume it was a private charity instead of the government. Do you think there’s any way a court would come to a remedy of ‘take down the building’ or 'rebuild the building according to the original plan for breach of a contract like that? To me, it just goes wildly against the way courts deal with actual contracts - some kind of monetary penalty or injunction against making new buildings makes sense, but tearing the building down or gutting it and rebuilding it to spec seem to me completely outside the bounds of reason.
