(iii) Threats to Publish Information

Where the defendant threatens to publish information which would detrimentally affect the claimant or someone known to the claimant, any contract which is entered into as a result of the threat may be set aside or any money paid as a result of the threat may be recovered. Norreys v Zeffert¹⁷³ illustrates the potential application of this head of compulsion. Zeffert was not able to discharge his gambling debts. He was interviewed by the National Turf Protection Society with a view to their securing a promise from him that he would pay his creditor. In order to induce Zeffert to make this promise his creditor threatened to report him to trade protection societies and to notify his social club of his refusal to pay. As a result of these threats Zeffert promised to pay his creditor. Although the trial judge held that this promise was not enforceable for lack of consideration, he went on to state, obiter, that if Zeffert had made a legally enforceable promise to pay his creditor, this would not have been enforced by the courts because it was obtained by threats and it was irrelevant that it was lawful to divulge the information as the creditor threatened to do. As Atkinson J said, just because ‘a person may have a legal right to do something which will injure another is not sufficient justification for the demand of money as the price of not doing it’.^[1]

Although the money which the creditor was seeking to recover from Zeffert was actually due to it, if Zeffert had paid the money he would still have been able to recover it because the money was owed to the creditor pursuant to a gambling transaction which was unlawful, and so would not have constituted a lawful basis for the creditor’s receipt. The result would be different if Zeffert’s debt had arisen from a lawful commercial transaction, for then the money paid would have been lawfully due to the creditor.

Although the point has never been expressly determined, as a matter of principle this type of undue pressure should be applicable regardless of the type of information and the person to whom the information is threatened to be divulged. These issues will, however, be relevant in assessing whether the threat to divulge the information to a particular person or organization actually caused the claimant to act as the defendant had demanded.

• [1] Ibid, 189. 175 [1975] QB 326, 338.