Open AccessIll-Gotten Contracts in New Zealand: Parting Thoughts on Duress, Undue Influence and Unconscionable Dealing – Kiwi-Style?
Author(s) -
Richard Bigwood
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
victoria university of wellington law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1179-3082
pISSN - 1171-042X
DOI - 10.26686/vuwlr.v42i1.5407
Subject(s) - unconscionability , undue influence , law , style (visual arts) , project commissioning , publishing , political science , law and economics , sociology , history , archaeology
This article considers the private-law doctrines of duress, undue influence and unconscionable dealing as they have feared at the hands of New Zealand's judiciary. It speculates, necessarily briefly, on whether there is anything distinctively "Kiwi" about the courts' formulation of and approach to those three doctrines in New Zealand, whether individually or as a related set. It concludes that because New Zealand's courts have borrowed from different, and not entirely consistent, jurisprudential sources of inspiration in relation to the development of each of the subject doctrines, what has resulted is a suite of exculpatory doctrines that are not as intellectually coordinated as they could and should be.