ABSTRACT
It is certainly true that there are situations where a contract made on the basis of a mistake of fact also involves a misrepresentation. A clear example would be where one of the contracting parties deliberately pretends to be someone other than who they really are, as in, for example, Lewis v Averay (1973). The statement ‘I am Richard Greene’ was a misrepresentation. The subsequent contract was also made on the basis of a unilateral mistake. Even where the mistake is mutual, if one of the parties has been misled by the other’s mistake, this may well have involved a misrepresentation. An example might be McRae v Commonwealth Disposals Commission (1951), where the invitation for tenders could be said to have amounted to a misrepresentation as to the existence of the oil tanker.1 Before looking in more detail at the degree of overlap between mistake and misrepresentation, the basic principles of the two areas will be outlined.
