(ii) Threats to Sue
Usually, where the defendant threatens to sue the claimant if he or she refuses to pay money or enter into a contract, this will not in itself constitute compulsion,[1] because the claimant is expected to resist the threat and to defend the proceedings in court.[2] In certain exceptional cases, however, a threat by the defendant to sue the claimant if money is not paid has been treated as grounding a restitutionary claim, and the ground of restitution is most appropriately characterized as undue pressure. This ground of restitution will be triggered in this category of case only where the defendant can be regarded as abusing the legal process, so the defendant’s conduct can be characterized as unconscionable. So, for example, in Unwin v Leaper172 it was held that the defendant had abused the legal process by threatening to bring proceedings to secure payment in respect of a matter which was unrelated to the threatened proceedings.
