Abstract

It is often said that the courts will not save parties from bad bargains: as Lord Nottingham observed, even ‘the Chancery mends no man's bargain’. This article considers what is meant by ‘bad bargain’, and argues that courts should be reluctant to develop the law in a way which would allow sophisticated commercial actors to escape bad bargains. This analysis is timely since in the current economic climate a number of long-term contracts have become especially disadvantageous to one party, and one consequence of Brexit is likely to be an increase in instances where one party tries to escape a bad bargain. Sympathy for the party which finds itself subject to a bad bargain has led to pressure on courts to find that an agreement is not binding; to expand the scope of the vitiating factors; and to liberalise the principles of interpretation and rectification, for example. It is suggested that courts should not readily bow to such pressure.

中文翻译：

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便宜货

摘要

人们常说，法院不会挽救政党免于讨价还价：正如诺丁汉勋爵所说，即使“大法官制也没有人讨价还价”。本文考虑了“讨价还价交易”的含义，并认为法院不应该以允许资深商业参与者逃避讨价还价的方式制定法律。这种分析是及时的，因为在当前的经济形势下，许多长期合同对一方而言尤其不利，英国脱欧的一个后果可能是，一方试图逃避讨价还价的情况增加。对当事方的讨价还价感到同情，导致法院施加压力，要求其认为一项协议不具有约束力。扩大影响因素的范围；例如，放宽解释和纠正的原则。建议法院不要轻易屈服于这种压力。