Signing under duress
13 September 2012
When negotiating a contract, there is a fine line between tough bargaining and actionable ‘economic duress’. Alan Ma explains how courts decided the difference in two recent cases
It is not uncommon for a party to a contract to threaten not to carry out its obligations in order to take advantage of a change in circumstances after the contract was signed. A classic example is where a contractor feels entitled to additional payment, because of variations or for proper pricing of variations, and threatens to stop work because such additional...