Undue Infl uence

Here, as elsewhere in the law, equity supplemented the common law. Equity extended the reach of the law to other unacceptable forms of persuasion. The law will investigate the manner in which the intention to enter into the transaction was secured: “how the intention was produced”, in the oft repeated words of Lord Eldon LC, from as long ago as 1807 ( Huguenin v Baseley 14 Ves 273, 300). If the intention was produced by an unacceptable means, the law will not permit the transaction to stand. The means used is regarded as an exercise of improper or “undue” infl uence, and hence unacceptable, whenever the consent thus procured ought not fairly to be treated as the expression of a person’s free will. It is impossible to be more precise or defi nitive. The circumstances in which one person acquires infl uence over another, and the manner in which infl uence may be exercised, vary too widely to permit of any more specifi c criterion.’