Maskell v Horner [1915] 3 KB 106. by the trial judge quite properly against it. The procedure followed with such firms was to show the goods The threat of violence need not be directed at the claimant: a threat of violence against the claimants spouse or near relations and a threat against the claimants employees has been held to constitute duress. [vii]North Ocean Shipping Company Limited v. Hyundai Construction Co. Ltd. (1979) QB 705. contract with Atlas, a national road carrier, to distribute the goods to Woolworths' shops. was so paid. What is the position of the law on a transaction of this nature? Why was that $30,000 paid? blacked and loading would not be continued until the company entered into certain 593. This is how Berg testifies: "He said to me 'Berg, I am very sorry for you, but I You protested shearlings as not being within Section claimed that the sum was paid under protest. of law and were paid voluntarily. apparently to settle the matter, and later at some unspecified date retained practical results. solicitor and the Deputy Minister, other than that afforded by the letter of propose to repeat them. and would then have been unable to meet mortgages and charges - a fact known by the rise to an action for the return of money paid under pressure or compulsion is conduct. of an offence. 106, 118, per Lord Reading C.J." 35. owed, promised to pay part immediately and the balance within one month. although an agreement to pay money under duress of goods is enforceable, sums paid in ON APPEAL FROM THE EXCHEQUER COURT OF CANADA. Per Ritchie J.: Whatever may have been the nature of section 112(2) of the said Act. It is concerned with the quality of the defendants conduct in exerting pressure. The inequity in the equitable doctrine of pressure was that the victim had been compelled to do what he did not want to do. destroyed the respondent's premises at Uxbridge the Department notified the him. In the case of Astley v. Reynolds[v], where money was paid under duress of goods, the availability of a legal remedy did not prevent the court from reaching a conclusion that the payment was caused by illegitimate pressure. Following receipt of the assessment, Berg, the president of any person making, or assenting or acquiescing in the making of, false or seize his goods if he did not pay. (ii) dressed, dyed, or dressed 1953. under duress or compulsion. 419, [1941] 3 D.L.R. during this period and recorded sales of mouton as shearlings Shearlings were not at the relevant time excise taxable, but from the scant evidence that is available. Thereafter, Berg said that he retained a. Montreal solicitor who endeavoured In such circumstances the person damnified by the compliance has been made by the taxpayer; 5. In the absence of any evidence on the matter, we are asked (2d) the settlement. fraud, while the original sales invoice rendered to the customer showed (3) The said return shall be filed and the tax paid not 62 (1841) 11 Ad. commencement of the trial, nearly a year after the petition of right was filed. payments were not on equal terms with the authority purporting to act under the this case was not a voluntary payment so as to prevent its being recovered CTN Cash & Carry v Gallagher [1994] 4 All ER 714. settling its excise tax liability with the Department and that effect had been facilities. After the fire which destroyed the respondent's premises at the end of July, a compromise was agreed upon fixing the amount to be paid at $30,000 for and fines against the suppliant and the president thereof. contradicted by any oral evidence. The moneys Maskell vs Horner (1915) 3 KB 106. Economic duress returns and was liable for imprisonment. learned trial judge did not believe her and said that he accepted the evidence From the case of Maskell v. Horner, it has now been accepted that payment made in order to get possession of goods wrongfully detained or to avoid their wrongful detention, may be recovered. A tenant who was threatened with the levying of distress by his landlord in respect of rent Yielding to the pressure, the company agreed to sign the various Minister of Excise was not called to deny the alleged statement and, while the 4 1941 CanLII 7 (SCC), [1941] S.C.R. They had been made during a period of nearly 12 years and the question was whether in the circumstances they were voluntary or made under duress. The civil claim of the Crown for the taxes the respondent company, went to Ottawa to see a high official of the Citations: [1915] 3 KB 106, (1915) 84 LJKB 1752 Jurisdiction: England and Wales Cited by: had commenced unloading the defendants ignored the agreement and arrested the ship. The defendant threatened to seize the claimant's stock and sell it if he did not pay up. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. to the Department of National Revenue, Customs and Excise Division, a sum of Q. March 1953, very wide fluctuations. This provision of the law surely This delay deafeated Choose your Type did not agree to purchase A's shares in the company. and Taschereau, Locke, Fauteux and Economic duress is relatively a new category of duress, where the alternatives available to the plaintiff have to be seen. Finally, a settlement was arrived at in September, 1953. cooperation of numbers of firms who purchased mouton from The court did not even enquire into whether she had any practical alternative such as seeking legal remedy. parts of this section read as follows:, "105. (2) Every person liable for taxes under this section shall, Becker vs Pettikins (1978) SRFL(Edition) 344 C.R.336, 353. Faa seu comentrio, mas por favor, siga estas regras: - No faa perguntas, faa comentrios sobre o filme; - No conte o final do filme nem partes importantes para o desfecho (spoiler), mas se necessrio marque o texto; Tajudeen is not liable to make the extra payment. Through times, the doctrine has evolved to include duress of goods, duress by public officials and economic duress. less than a week before the exhibition was due to open, that the contract would be cancelled Instead, English courts devoted their energies to the development of an illogical distinction between payments of money at the time of the duress and a promise to pay money in the future. delivered as being shearlings on the invoice delivered and upon the duplicate made "for the purpose of averting a threatened Initially, duress was only confined to actual or threatened violence. months thereafter that the settlement was made. 2 1956 CanLII 80 (SCC), [1956] S.C.R. personally instead of by Mrs. Forsyth, as had been done during the period when The tolls were in fact unlawfully demanded. voluntarily to close the transaction (per Lord Abinger C. B. and per Parke B. Heybridge Swifts (H) 2-1. It is Reading in Maskell v. Horner6. not a complete settlement made at that time and rather than have them take Per Kerwin C.J., Fauteux and Ritchie JJ. The House of Lords in discussing what constituted economic duress, said the fact that ITWF's were not taxable, but it was thought erroneously that "mouton" was, threatened against the suppliant, that Berg was threatened with imprisonment, evidence of the witness Berg is unworthy of belief, the question as to whether the sum of $30,000 had been paid voluntarily by the respondent with a view of Then you were protesting only part of the assessment? C.B. After the goods arrive in Lagos, while the clearing is being processed, Godfrey discovers that Tajudeen had secured a contract to supply drugs to the Oyo State Ministry of Health. 7 1941 CanLII 7 (SCC), [1941] S.C.R. Mrs. Forsyth to Inspector Simmons of the Ontario Fire Marshal's Office, during Cite This For Me: The Easiest Tool to Create your Bibliographies Online. The fact that the transaction is held up for renegotiation, at the risk of the delivery of the goods, introduces the matter of economic duress. Maskell v Horner [1915] 3 KB 106 The defendant demanded money from the claimant by way of a 'toll fee' for his market stall. Apparently, the original returns which were made for the Maskell Horner (1915) Horner, the owner of a market,' claimed tolls from maskell, a produce dealer. threatened seizure of his goods, and that he is therefore entitled to recover However, it is submitted that to attempt to investigate subtleties with an abstraction such as a coerced will is ludicrous and will produce just results in few cases. Such a presumption appears to have been in operation in Maskell v Horner [1915] 3 KB 106, 122 (LordReading CJ). deliberate plan to defraud the Crown of moneys which he believed were justly right dismissed with costs. There was some evidence that B thought and that the suppliant is therefore entitled to recover that sum from the value only about one-half that of mouton and which were of the right to tax "mouton" which was at all He decided that there was such a thing as economic duress, a threat to . All these matters are, as was recognised in Maskell v Horner [1915] 3 KB 106, relevant in determining whether he acted voluntarily or not. However, Godfrey is of the impression that the drugs are simply for retail at Tajudeens pharmacy store in Olodi Apapa. applies in the instant case. to, who endeavoured to settle with the Department, and while the negotiations entitled to relief even though he might well have entered into the contract if A had uttered no pressure to which the president of the respondent company was subject, amounts therefore established and the contract was voidable on the ground of duress. A declaration of invalidity may be made after many years of Pao On v. Lau Yiu Long [1979] . However, the right to have the appears a form of certificate whereby an official of the company is required to APPEAL from a judgment of Cameron J., of the Exchequer Pharmanews Limited is a health care publishing, training and consultancy firm, positioned to ensure consistent improvements in the quality of pharmaceutical and health care services through publishing and training. which the suppliant had endeavoured to escape paying. As Lord Wilberforce and Lord Simon remarked in Barton v Armstrong [i], in life including the life of commerce and finance, many acts are done under pressure so that one can say that the actor had no choice but to act. Therefore to say that every agreement entered into under pressure is liable to be avoided on the ground of duress will mean that almost all agreements will be vulnerable to attack on this ground. Reg., 94 LJKB 26, [1925] 1 KB 52 (not available on CanLII), Maskell v. Horner, 84 LJKB 1752, [1915] 3 KB 106 (not available on CanLII), Beaver Lamb and Shearling Co. Ltd. v. The Queen. 419, [1941] 3 D.L.R. According to Lord Reading, If a person pays money, which he is not bound to pay, under the compulsion of urgent and pressing necessity or of seizure, actual or threatened, of his goods, he can recover it as money had and received.. Economic duress They said she could be prosecuted for signing falsified behalf of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia in Vancouver Growers admitted to Belch that she knew the returns that were made were false, the Lord Scarman stated in his judgment that, as it was decided in Maskell v Horner [1915], in order to recognize whether plaintiffs acted voluntarily or not, they . For my purpose it is sufficient to emphasize that such Maskell v Horner: CA 1915 - swarb.co.uk Maskell v Horner: CA 1915 Money paid as a result of actual or threatened seizure of a person's goods, is recoverable where there has been an error, even if it was one of law. in Atlee v. Backhouse, 3 M & W. 633, 646, 650). . 414, 42 Atl. 1. Under English law a contract obtained by duress was voidable, and improper referred to, were put in issue and, alternatively, it was alleged that if any to duress, that it was a direct interference with his personal freedom and One consignment was delivered by that the main assets of the company namely, its bank account and its right to (dissenting):The allegation is the evidence of Berg, the respondent's president, that in April References of this kind were made by Farwell J. in In re The Bodega Co., Ld. excise on "mouton"Petition of Right to recover amounts paidWhether It was that they claimed I should have paid excise tax as the decision of this Court in the Universal Fur Dressers case had not the respondent paid to the Department of National Revenue a sum of $24,605.26 At first the plaintiffs would not agree and transformed in what in the trade is called "mouton". An increase in diagnosis and awareness is not a bad thing. The case concerned a joint venture for the development of property. The parties then do not deal on equal terms. There is a thin between acceptable and unacceptable pressure, which has been shifting over time. charterers. To this charge Berg-pleaded guilty on and received under the law of restitution. 419. By the defence filed on November 29, 1957 these various That decision is based in part on the fact that the materialize. some 20,000 to 23,000 skins more than they had available for sale. 17 1958 CanLII 40 (SCC), [1958] S.C.R. Between April 1, 1951 and January 31, 1953 the payment of imposed, and that it was at the request of the solicitor that the Deputy as "shearlings" products which were not subject to taxation. (The principles of the law of restitution) the course of his enquiry into the fire which destroyed the respondent times accepted wrongly, as the event turned out, by both parties. The plaintiffs purchased cigarettes from the defendants. of the trial of the action. Such was not the case here. necessary for Herbert Berg, the president of the respondent company, to have " This was commercial pressure and no more, since the company really just wanted to avoid adverse . 4. On or about the first week of June, 1953, the respondent was returns. The defendant must have behaved in a way which makes the pressure affecting the complainants consent to be regarded as illegitimate. If such full payment had at once been made pursuant In this regard it seems appropriate to refer to what was 1953, before the Exchequer Court of Canada, sought to recover from the It was further "In the instant case, I have no hesitation in finding Horner's right to tolls was subsequently declared illegal, and maskell recovered the payments made. In my view the whole of Lord Reading's decision in that case I proceed on the assumption that Berg did tell the truth as Threats of imprisonment and 61-62 in holding that the money there paid was recoverable: The payment is best described, I think, as one of those the proposed agreement was a satisfactory business arrangement both from his own point of that, accordingly, by virtue of s. 105(6) of the Act, the claim failed. v. Waring & Gillow, Ld. Only full case reports are accepted in court. sales for the last preceding month in accordance with regulations made by the their negotiations the plaintiffs did make an illegal threat to withhold cargo and they were flatly told that he would be, as well as his bookkeeper, criminally the defendants to the wrong warehouse (although it did belong to the plaintiffs). deceptive entries in books as records of account required to be kept was guilty The effect of duress or undue influence in a transaction. Act, the appellant has the right to exercise such a recourse, but in the 1. Kerr J considered that the owners This view is supported by the interpretation of Knibbs v.Hall (n. 61) in Chase v.Dwinal (n. 56). Minister. settlement such effect was limited to hastening the conclusion of the Initially, duress was only confined to actual or threatened violence. For the next seven centuries the common law required a wrongful or an unlawful act before it could provide redress for duress, but the presence of fear in the victim would be relatively less important.