By Chinua Asuzu
Unlike most law terms of non-English origin, laches comes from French, not Latin. It’s the French noun for “remissness” or “slackness.”
Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th edition, offers two senses of laches:
(1) “Unreasonable delay in pursuing a right or claim—almost always an equitable one—in a way that prejudices the party against whom the relief is sought”; and
(2) “The equitable doctrine by which a court denies relief to a claimant who has unreasonably delayed in asserting the claim, when that delay has prejudiced the party against whom relief is sought.”
Laches doesn’t apply to cases governed by statutes of limitation. Here’s how Snell’s Principles of Equity states this on page 35: “It is clear that where the Statutes of Limitation apply expressly, delay short of the statutory period is no bar to a claim, whether legal or equitable.”
In Lindsay Petroleum v Hurd (1874) LR 5 PC 221, 239, 240, Lord Selborne LC explained laches thus: “Now the doctrine of laches in courts of equity is not an arbitrary or a technical doctrine. Where it would be practically unjust to give a remedy, either because the party has, by his conduct, done that which might fairly be regarded as a waiver of it, or where by his conduct and neglect he has, though perhaps not waiving that remedy, yet put the other party in a situation in which it would not be reasonable to place him if the remedy were afterwards to be asserted, in either of these cases lapse of time and delay are most material.”
Let’s hear the conclusion of the matter from Snell’s Equity, 36: “Laches essentially consists of a substantial lapse of time coupled with the existence of circumstances which make it inequitable to enforce the claim.”
Chinua Asuzu, Learned Writing (Partridge, 2019), 582–583.
