clean hands

a self-imposed ordinance that closes the doors of a court of equity to one tainted with inequitableness or bad faith relative to the matter in which he seeks relief, however improper may have been the behavior of the defendant. That doctrine is rooted in the historical concept of court of equity as a vehicle for affirmatively enforcing the requirements of conscience and good faith.

It is said that a party seeking the aid of a court of equity must come into court with clean hands. It refers only to wrongful conduct in the particular acts or transactions which raise the equity he seeks to enforce; Trice v. Comstock, 121 Fed. 620, 57 C. C. A. 646, 61 L. R. A. 176; West v. Washburn, 153 App. Div. 460, 138 N. Y. Supp. '230.

It is a rule of equity that a plaintiff must come with "clean hands," i. e., he must be free from reproach in his conduct. But there is this limitation to the rule: that his conduct can only be excepted to in respect to the subject-matter of his claim ; everything else is immaterial. American Ass'n v. Innis, 109 Ky. 595, 60 S. W. 388.

Defined under Clean in Black's Law Dictionary.

It is a rule of equity that a plaintiff must come with “clean hands,” i, e., he must be free from reproach in his conduct. But there is this limitation to the rule: that his conduct can only be excepted to in respect to the subject-matter of his claim; everything else is immaterial.

Upright before the law; free from fault; in a position to ask the intervention of a court of equity. Hand down. To decide, declare, announce. Hand down an opinion. When a member of a court of errors and appeals has written an opinion in a case and delivered it to the clerk for transmission to the court whose decision has been under review, the opinion is said to be " handed down."

Defined under Hanaper in A Dictionary of Law.