Non est factum is a defence in contract law that allows a signing party to escape performance of an agreement "which is fundamentally different from what he or she intended to execute or sign". A claim of non est factum means that the signature on the contract was signed by mistake, without knowledge of its meaning. A successful plea would make the contract void ab initio.
Beswick v Beswick[1967] UKHL 2, [1968] AC 58 was a landmark English contract law case on privity of contract and specific performance. The House of Lords, overruling the decision of Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal, ruled that a person who was not party to a contract had no independent standing to sue to enforce it, even if the contract was clearly intended for their benefit.
L'Estrange v F Graucob Ltd [1934] 2 KB 394 is a leading English contract law case on the incorporation of terms into a contract by signature. There are exceptions to the rule that a person is bound by his or her signature, including fraud, misrepresentation and non est factum.
English contract law is the body of law that regulates legally binding agreements in England and Wales. With its roots in the lex mercatoria and the activism of the judiciary during the Industrial Revolution, it shares a heritage with countries across the Commonwealth, from membership in the European Union, continuing membership in Unidroit, and to a lesser extent the United States. Any agreement that is enforceable in court is a contract. A contract is a voluntary obligation, contrasting to the duty to not violate others rights in tort or unjust enrichment. English law places a high value on ensuring people have truly consented to the deals that bind them in court, so long as they comply with statutory and human rights.
Mortgage Corporation v Shaire [2001] Ch 743 is a widely reported English land law case relating to the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996. Such a status specifically flowed from an instance of non est factum mortgage fraud where the mortgage lender and the defrauded co-owner wished to accelerate and delay sale respectively. The case is relevant to matrimonial law in that the respective equitable shares in the home awarded to Mrs Shaire and Mr Fox in 1987 matrimonial proceedings were never defined and it fell to the court to define these.
Smith v Eric S Bush [1990] UKHL 1 is an English tort law and contract law case, heard by the House of Lords. First, it concerned the existence of a duty of care in tort for negligent misstatements, not made directly to someone relying on the statement. Second, it concerned the reasonableness of a term excluding liability under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, s 2(2) and s 11.
The law of mistake comprises a group of separate rules in English contract law. If the law deems a mistake to be sufficiently grave, then a contract entered into on the grounds of the mistake may be void. A mistake is an incorrect understanding by one or more parties to a contract. There are essentially three types of mistakes in contract,
Unconscionability in English law is a field of contract law and the law of trusts, which precludes the enforcement of voluntary obligations unfairly exploiting the unequal power of the consenting parties. "Inequality of bargaining power" is another term used to express essentially the same idea for the same area of law, which can in turn be further broken down into cases on duress, undue influence and exploitation of weakness. In these cases, where someone's consent to a bargain was only procured through duress, out of undue influence or under severe external pressure that another person exploited, courts have felt it was unconscionable to enforce agreements. Any transfers of goods or money may be claimed back in restitution on the basis of unjust enrichment subject to certain defences.
Street v Mountford[1985] UKHL 4 is an English land law case from the House of Lords. It set out principles to determine whether someone who occupied a property had a tenancy, or only a licence. This mattered for the purpose of statutory tenant rights to a reasonable rent, and had a wider significance as a lease had "proprietary" status and would bind third parties.
Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning,, was an English barrister and judge. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when he was appointed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and transferred to the King's Bench Division in 1945. He was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after less than five years in the High Court. He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. In retirement he wrote several books and continued to offer opinions on the state of the common law through his writing and his position in the House of Lords.
Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Etridge [2001] UKHL 44 is a leading case relevant for English land law and English contract law on the circumstances under which actual and presumed undue influence can be argued to vitiate consent to a contract.
Bank of Credit and Commerce International S.A. v Aboody [1992] 4 All ER 955 is an English contract law case relating to undue influence.
Barclays Bank plc v O’Brien[1993] UKHL 6 is an English contract law case relating to undue influence. It set out the basic categories of undue influence as,
Oppenheimer v Cattermole [1976] AC 249 is a judicial decision of the English courts relating to whether English law should refuse to recognise Nazi era laws relating to the appropriation of Jewish property. The courts considered the question whether the Nazi law was so iniquitous that it should refuse to recognise it as law, thus raising the "connection between the concepts of law and morality".
National Provincial Bank Ltd v Ainsworth [1965] is an English land law and family law case, concerning the quality of a person's interest in a home when people live together, as well as licenses in land.
Conlon v Ozolins (1984) NZLR 489 is an important New Zealand case involving the legal issues of non est factum and mutual mistake.
Jenkins v NZI Finance Ltd (1991) 3 NZBLC 102,198 is a cited case in New Zealand regarding that the common law remedy of non est factum for a contract is not available simply because a party was careless in signing a contract without first properly reading it.
National Westminster Bank plc v Morgan[1985] UKHL 2 is a judicial decision of the House of Lords relating to English contract law and the doctrine of undue influence. The case is most well known for the comments of Lord Scarman about the supposed requirement of "manifest disadvantage" to set aside a contract for undue influence.
CIBC Mortgages plc v Pitt[1993] UKHL 7 is a decision of the House of Lords relating to undue influence. The decision confirmed that a person did not need to suffer "manifest disadvantage" under a transaction in order to challenge it for actual undue influence.
