ABSTRACT
Courts of equity have long claimed a jurisdiction to set aside unconscientious and improvident dealings. Until recently, however, there was no coherent doctrine relating to unconscientious transactions. Instead, equity intervened in an ad hoc way to set aside exploitative agreements. For example, improvident dealings by solicitors with their pay or prize money attracted equitable intervention in the 18th century. The best known examples of these isolated categories of intervention were ‘catching bargains’ or ‘dispositions of reversionary interests by expectant heirs’.
