ABSTRACT
Certainly this is the well established position if payments are made, for example, to avoid the wrongful seizure of goods where there is no prior agreement to make such payments. The best known English case to this effect is probably Maskell v Horner [1915] 3 KB 106, where the plaintiff had over many years paid illegal tolls on his goods offered for sale in the vicinity of Spitalfields Market. The plaintiff had paid under protest, though the process was so prolonged, that the protests became almost in the nature of jokes, though the plaintiff had in fact suffered seizures of his goods when he had not paid. Lord Reading CJ did not say that express words of protest were always necessary, though they might be useful evidence to negative voluntary payments; the circumstances taken as a whole must indicate that the payments were involuntary. Buckley LJ, at p 124, regarded the making of a protest before paying to avoid the wrongful seizure of one’s goods as ‘a further factor’, which went to show that the payment was not voluntary. Pickford LJ, at p 126, likewise regarded the fact of protest as ‘some indication’ that the payer intended to resist the claim.
