A person should not be held to a contract if he or she entered such contract due to a threat or pressure that was put on them. The doctrine of duress in common law covers this issue while in equity it is dealt with by the doctrine of undue influence. Economic duress has had, as McKendrick says, a ‘’somewhat chequered career’’ and being ‘’bedevilled by conceptual confusion’’ . Previously, actual physical violence or threats of physical violence must have been imposed on the individual themselves and the courts recognised such acts to the weaker party as an excuse for avoiding a contract however, the doctrine of duress has become much more expansive throughout the years. A series of English cases from as early as 1731 established the common law doctrine of duress of goods and introduced that money paid under economic compulsion could be recoverable, but the idea of actually setting aside a …show more content…
This test applies to cases of misrepresentation and mistake so the contention for a higher test seems to be unjust in cases of economic duress. Mance J said ‘’The illegitimate pressure must have been such as actually caused the making of the agreement, in the sense that it would not otherwise have been made either at all or, at least, in the terms in which it was made. In that sense, the pressure must have been decisive or clinching’’ . This alters for reason of public policy in cases duress to the person as the burden of proof is reversed . This is shown in the case of Barton v Armstrong in which a managing director was threatened by the company chairman of the same company with death if he did not agree to purchase some shares. Even though there was evidence that showed that the managing director might have been willing to buy shares without any threat being issued, the agreement was still set
Tort, one of the crucial subjects of study when analyzing common law jurisdictions. Tort, is an action which causes another person or party to suffer harm or loss []. The person who has committed a tortious act is called the tortfeasor while the person who suffered harm or loss from such act is called the injured party or the victim. Although crimes may be torts, torts may not be crimes [] simply because a tort may not have broken a law. In fact, one must understand that the key idea of tort is not to punish the tortfeasor(s) but rather to compensate the victim(s).
Lexis Nexis 2013, Duress, Undue Influence, Breach of Fiduciary Obligation and Unconscionable Conduct [Internet]. viewed 13 March 2014,
The Scots law has its basis brought up from Roman law, that includes uncodifed civil law and common law with medieval sources. Scots law is the legal system of Scotland. The Scots law has two types of courts responsible for justice; criminal and civil. The supreme civil court is the Court of Session, also, certain civil appeals can be moved to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The High Court of Justiciary is the supreme criminal court in Scotland. Apart from these, the Sheriff Court is the main civil and criminal court that hear most of the cases. There roughly are about 49 Sheriff Courts in the country. Also, the District Courts had been introduced in 1975 for very minor and small claims.
Duress – ‘Unlawful pressure exerted upon a person to coerce that person to perform an act that he or she ordinarily would not perform’ . Based on the past violent conflicts, Julia could have potentially feared Tony. Her fear possibly motivated her to act in the threatening manner that lead to the jump that ultimately killed Tony.
In the 19th century, promissory estoppel was first introduced in Hughes v Metropolitan Railway Co , where Lord Cairns ruled that parties who have entered into fixed terms and then afterwards, by their own act or will, enter negotiations which influence the other party to assume that the stringent rights that were originally imposed will not be enforced or will be deferred, should be unable to reverse from this if it is inequitable for them to do so. This doctrine was resurrected by Lord Denning in Central London Property Ltd v High Trees House Ltd , where he expanded on the doctrine of promissory estoppel and ruled that where there is a promise intended to form legal relations and the promisor knew it would be acted upon and it was acted upon by the promisee then the promise made would be binding even with a lack of consideration.
Good faith was described by Lord Bingham in Interfoto as “playing fair, coming clean, or putting one’s cards face upwards on the table.” It owes its origins to the law of equity and can be traced back to the case of Carter v Boehm , where Lord Mansfield first introduced it in insurance contracts: “Good faith forbids either party by concealing what he privately knows, to draw the other into a bargain, from his ignorance of that fact and his believing of the contrary”. Lord Mansfield attempted, but failed to extend good faith as a general principle in English law. Lord Hobhouse pointed in The Star Sea that Lord Mansfield’s equitable principle of good faith only survived limited classes of transactions as English law developed “preferring benefits of simplicity and certainty.” This was reasserted in Interfoto where Lord Bingham introduced piecemeal solutions, and further in Walford v Miles where Lord Ackner iterated the position that there is no overriding principle of good faith in English law as the “concept of a duty to carry on negotiations in good faith is inherently repugnant to the adversarial position of the parties when involved in negotiations… a duty to negotiate in good faith is as unworkable in practic...
On 2/9/18 at approximately 01:28 I, Officer Ramirez #212 was dispatched to Bayside Hall Room #5110 (located at 6515 Ocean Drive Corpus Christi TX, 78412 on the Texas A&M University Corpus Christi) in reference to suspicious activity smell of marijuana.
In Criminal cases, the general principle is that when it comes to proving the guilt of an accused person, the burden of proving this rests with the prosecution . In the case of Woolmington v DPP , it was stated in the judgment of Lord Sankey that; “Throughout the web of the English Criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen, that is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt subject to….. the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception”. From the Judgment of Lord Sankey, the following circumstances where the accused bears the legal burden of proof in criminal cases were established; where the accused pleads the defence of insanity, where a statute or Act of Parliament expressly imposes the legal burden of proof on the defence, and where a statute or Act of Parliament impliedly imposes the legal burden of proof on the defence. An accused person will also bear the legal burden of proof of the statutory defence of diminished responsibility which is covered by section 2(2) Homicide Act 1957. In the cases of Lambert Ali and Jordan , the Court of Appeal held that imposing the legal burden of proof of proving diminished responsibility on the defence does not infringe Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Based on common law and precedent, the English law of contract has been formulated and developed over a number of years with it’s primary purpose to provide a regulated framework within which individuals can contract freely. In order to ensure a contract is enforceable there are certain elements which must be satisfied, one of which is the doctrine of consideration. Lord Denning famously professed; “the doctrine of consideration is too firmly fixed to be overthrown by a side wind” . This is a crucial indication that consideration has long been regarded as the cardinal ‘badge of enforceability’ in the formulation and variation of contracts in English common law.
The rule of law, simply put, is a principle that no one is above the law. This means that there should be no leniency for a person because of peerage, sex, religion or financial standing. England and Wales do not have a written constitution therefore the Rule of Law, which along with the parliamentary Sovereignty was regarded by legal analyst A.C Dicey, as the pillars of the UK Constitution. The Rule of Law was said to be adopted as the “unwritten constitution of Great Britain”.
The old common law had a doctrine of absolute contract under which contractual obligations were binding no matter what might occur (Paradine v Jane, 1647). In order to ease the hardship which this rule caused in cases where the contract could not be properly fulfilled through no fault of either party but due to occurrence of unforeseen events, the doctrine of frustration was developed.
The defense of duress is available where a defendant commits a crime to prevent the greater of death or serious injury to himself or another threatened by a third party. On the other hand, the defense of necessity refers to circumstances where a person chooses to commit an offence to avoid a greater evil to them or another which would result from objective dangers arising from the circumstances in which they are placed . The difference between these two similar defenses is that duress is regarded as an excuse in English Law, whereas necessity is regarded as a justificatory defense.
The doctrine of binding judicial precedent is perceived as the core element of the English legal system. The doctrine is perceived as the ‘rule of thumb’ judges follow in deciding their judgements. This involves taking into account long-standing precedents, which only matured from the nineteenth century. A fundamental element of common law systems is the application of the principle of stare decisis , which means ‘let the decision stand’. This in practice means that judges in lower courts are bound to decide cases using existing legal principles made by superior courts. Therefore, there is a hierarchical structure in the English courts.
The basic law of a contract is an agreement between two parties or more, to deliver a service or a product. And reach a consensus about the terms and conditions that is enforced by law and a contract can be only valid if it is lawful other than that there can’t be a contract. For a contract to exist the parties must have serious intentions, agreement, contractual capacity meaning a party must be able to carry a responsibility, lawful, possibility of performance and formalities. Any duress, false statements, undue influence or unconscionable dealings could make a contract unlawful and voidable.
Everyone know that Law is a system of rules which are developed in community with a aim to govern a society maintaining, justice, protect individuals and property. There are a lot of countries and they have own set of rules and norms including itself constitutional, criminal, contract, trust, international, tort, administrative and property. During the long time law improving and developing a lot and become more invulnerable and fair. Therefore, in a modern society and most of countries law has become similar with similar legal system. Nowadays there are several general types of legal system in the world and two main most popular of them, which had mostly spread through the world. They