Undue Influence

A discussion of the High Court of Australia's recent decision in Thorne v Kennedy with reference to the three vitiating factors discussed by the High Court: duress, undue influence and unconscionable conduct. It is suggested that the High Court left unclear the status of lawful act duress, and the overlap between duress and actual undue influence remains unclear. Moreover, it is also unclear how equitable principles interact with the provisions of the Family Law Act. The significance of independent legal advice and a post-nuptial binding financial agreement in this case is also discussed.

No religious or mystical tradition is immune from the presence of spiritual abuse, for wherever there are people who are seeking to become closer to essential truths, purpose, and meaning, there will be individuals seeking to generate counterfeit currency to offer to those who are unaware, or incautious toward the dangers which lie in wait along the spiritual path. Fraudulent teachers might call themselves a guru, shaykh, rimpoche, monk, priest, imam, apostle, avatar, or minister. They might also call themselves educators, revolutionaries, political leaders, and freedom fighters. Whatever they might call themselves, if they seek to gain control over others through techniques of undue influence, then, they are propagators of spiritual abuse. This book is relevant to individuals from all spiritual traditions, but often focuses on the Sufi spiritual tradition.

At common law, the law has always recognized that a contract must be entered into voluntarily and that a person who entered into a contract as a result of threats against the person would not be bound by the contract. The concept of economic duress is of recent origin where the courts have started to acknowledge that threats against goods can be just as compelling as threats against the person. Alongside, to redress the narrow doctrine of duress at law, the equitable doctrine of undue influence was developed. However, both duress and undue influence still remain unclear and unresolved and a clearer exposition of the principles governing these two doctrines is needed. This project will critically examine the doctrines of duress and undue influence.

This article focuses on the doctrine of undue influence as applied in bilateral transactions between spouses (husbands and wives), civil partners, and other couples that are in long-term cohabitation. // I am grateful to Professor Colm O’Cinneide (UCL) for supervising this article. I am also indebted to Ms Amy Goymour (Cambridge) and the editors of the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal for their insightful comments on various drafts.

Bob & Julie have been happily cohabiting for the last 10 years, they live at 27 Landsdowne Drive London N1. Julie works as a nurse at the local hospital whilst Bob is a ‘self-made man’ with a small business that customises drones for advertising purposes. Their property is valued at around £350,000.00 and is in Bob’s sole name.

This paper affords a contextual, exploitation-based account of the doctrines of undue influence and unconscionable dealing in the law of contract. In contrast with the vast majority of literature on undue influence and unconscionable dealing, this paper argues that substantive unfairness is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for establishing either doctrine. Rather, it is the stronger party’s exploitation of the weaker party’s position which is of importance when granting relief in equity. Notwithstanding the centrality of exploitation when making a finding of undue influence or unconscionable dealing, the law presently demarcates between the doctrines by reference to the contexts in which they operate. The conclusion is therefore that although conceptual coherence between both doctrines is welcome, any attempt at assimilation ought to be sensitive to the contexts which undue influence and unconscionable dealing currently regulate.

Three issues of paramount importance -- namely,  fundamentalism, spiritual abuse, and terrorism -- are brought together in one volume in a way that delineates the interconnected dynamics of these topics. Moreover, these central themes are engaged from a variety of perspectives ranging from, on the one hand, psychology, sociology and philosophy, to, on the other hand, history, political science, and religion. The author draws upon more than forty-five years of experience on the Sufi path to lend a unique perspective to the manner in which terrorism, fundamentalism, and spiritual abuse are explored and analyzed throughout the book.

There is a need to update the legal system to recognize the use of hypnosis and undue influence occurring throughout the world. Extremist groups are deceptively recruiting and indoctrinating people to do terrorist attacks. Human traffickers are grooming and using hypnosis and social influence techniques to create labor and sex slaves. In this paper, a number of key concepts and models will be used to more fully define DSM-5's Dissociative Disorder 300.15: Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory, along with Robert Jay Lifton and Margaret Singer's work (1995) are the foundation of the BITE model of mind control (Hassan, 1988). Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional Control are the four overlapping components through which destructive groups bring people to be obedient and compliant to authority. A programmed cult identity is created through a complex social influence process. That false identity dominates real identity. The ethics and morality of undue influence are understood differently. In this paper, we analyze the techniques of breaking down the existing personalityand creating a false or pseudo-identity. The Influence Continuum and BITE mind control model and Lifton's eight criteria for Thought Reform are discussed; Scheflin's Social Influence Model (2015) is presented as one tool for analyzing undue influence in a forensic and juridical context. To support the hypothesis presented here, an anonymous online research survey was conducted involving 1033 participants to gather data regarding specific variables of the BITE model, in an effort to develop an instrument that might be useful in determining key aspects of undue influence.

Background: Social media has globalised compassion enabling requests for donations to spread beyond geographical boundaries. The use of social media for medical crowdfunding links people with unmet healthcare needs to charitable donors. There is no doubt that fundraising campaigns using such platforms facilitates access to financial resources to the benefit of patients and their caregivers. Main text: This paper reports on a critical review of the published literature and information from other online resources discussing medical crowdfunding and the related ethical questions. The review highlighted the benefits of crowdfunding as well as the under-exploration of the risk of having patients' desires and human rights undermined during online fundraising campaigns. Majority of these campaigns get initiated on behalf of the patients, especially the very sick and dependant. The ethical questions raised relate to the voluntariness of informed consent and the possibility of patients being used as a means to an end. Vulnerability of patients may expose them to coercion, undue influence, manipulation, and violation of their human rights. The success of these campaigns is influenced by the digital skills, pre-existing social networks and, the emotional potency. Healthcare is a public good, and online market forces should not determine access to essential health services. The benefits of crowdfunding cannot be subverted, but it can perpetuate unintended injustices, especially those arising from socioeconomic factors. Conclusions: Policymakers ought to monitor the utilisation of crowdfunding sites to identify policy failures and unmet essential health care needs responsible for driving individuals to use these platforms. The upholding of human rights and the fundamental respect of the individual's wishes is a moral imperative. The need for an ethics framework to guide different stakeholders during medical crowdfunding needs further examination.

Para atender las exigencias del mundo actual se requiere de la proposicion de categorias dogmaticas que contribuyan en el desarrollo del sistema juridico unificando conceptos, simplificando caminos interpretativos, y sobre la base de la propia tradicion redisenar instrumentos para mejorar el derecho poniendolo a tono con las exigencias de su tiempo. De alli la intencion del autor de aventurarse en una reconstruccion historico-dogmatica de figuras bien conocidas por la tradicion del sistema juridico romano-germanico, en aras de identificar un principio de moderacion en los contratos. Un principio de equilibrio que desde los tiempos de la Escuela medieval se contiene en la expresion reductio ad aequitatem y se realiza mediante instrumentos que procuran corregir y adaptar el contrato segun el caso. Asi, el autor se fija en los momentos de la celebracion y de la ejecucion del contrato para observar la ratio de los institutos que en esos momentos del iter contractual sirven la causa de l...

Despite the existence of a near consensus on most of the specifics of common law contract law, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about how doctrines of contractual fairness are to be applied to excuse a party from a contract, and no clear justificatory principle has been found to explain them. This article attempts to reach a unifying principle for the exceptions to contractual enforcement, including unconscionability, undue influence, duress, and mistake, based on the premise that, in order to find a unifying principle for why we provide exceptions to contractual enforcement on the basis that the contract is unfair, we must first determine why contract is enforced at all. The exceptions to contractual enforcement can then be united by a principle that contracts should not be enforced where to do so would undermine the purposes of enforcing contract, or where the reasons for non-enforcement outweigh the reasons for enforcement.

This article therefore establishes three general premises that underlie contractual enforcement: (1) the utility of contract law, as a state-enforced law of general application, should be judged on aggregative and societal level; (2) contractual enforcement encourages and enforces welfare-enhancing agreements, but only if we can assume that each party is able to rationally consider her own self-interest with respect to the terms of the agreement such that both parties increase their utility in the bargain; and (3) agreements that are rationally welfare-enhancing at the time of their formation should generally be enforced even in cases in which one party later regrets the agreement to protect the welfare-enhancing societal institution of contracting.

Based upon these premises, this article argues that the doctrines of contractual fairness can be unified by an inquiry into whether, in the circumstances, both parties were rationally able to consider and protect their self-interest in the formation of the agreement. It then proposes that where both parties could not, the agreement should be set aside, as the purposes of contract are undermined. Where only one party could not, the agreement should be set aside where the other party knew, or should have known, that the other party could not rationally consider and protect their own interests. This latter caveat serves to protect the societal and aggregative nature of contract law.

This article then demonstrates that this approach can justify existing doctrines of fairness and can also explain the outcomes of seminal contractual fairness cases. This article also explores what it means to be able to rationally protect one’s self-interest, and addresses a number of possible objections and concerns to the argument presented.

The word "leadership" is, and has been for some time, a buzz word which is espoused by many to be 'the' key to solving most, if not all, of the problems in the world.  If only there were the 'right' sort of leaders in the world – that is, the right kind of “control” -- then the political, economic, educational, business, scientific, environmental, military, judicial, and spiritual difficulties facing humankind could be resolved.

The desire for leadership is a pathological disorder that is engendered in others by those who already have succumbed to the malady.  Leadership is a delusional belief system in which a human being believes that he or she should be given (or usurp) the authority to organize and control the lives of other human beings.

Chaos is not the opposite of leadership.  The co-operation of equals stands in opposition to the idea of leadership.

Every human being is sovereign and has an inalienable right to seek to push back the horizons of ignorance free from interference as long as such efforts are consonant with honoring a like right in relation to others.  Reconciling the boundaries of sovereignty among human beings is a dynamic, complex, and nuanced process ... a process that can only be successfully navigated by means of an exercise of co-operation among sovereign individuals and not through the leadership of the few with respect to the many.

This book explores different aspects of the pathological character of 'leadership’ – the root of control  Once the underlying principles of the delusional disorder are appreciated, an individual might be in a better position to realize the character of the pathology of leadership (i.e., the desire to control others) and resist its seductive, Siren-like wail.

Wyzysk i instytucje do niego zbliżone w prawie prywatnym Niemiec, Austrii oraz Szwajcarii  [Undue Influence and Similar Institutions in German, Austrian and Swiss law] report prepared for Instytut Wymiaru Sprawiedliwości, Warszawa 2019 (pp. 58)

Provides a good illustration for students who are in the process of drafting law review articles, because it sets up the fairly basic and practical contours of a scholarly piece that includes an historical background, thesis-specific factual discussions from the relevant case law, and analysis that has a clear connection to a published judicial source. This paper begins with a recent case at the time the article was written and then synthesizes related precedent over a period of several decades (from 1858 to 1996). With the guidance of an intermediate court of appeals judge, the paper suggests analytical approaches to clarifying case law that was, in 1996, difficult to comprehend and then synthesize.