Duress

Economic duress reached the UK Supreme Court in Pakistan International Airline Corporation (Respondent) v Times Travel (UK) Ltd (Appellant) [2021] UKSC 40, where the question for the Court was framed directly: 'What are the ingredients of economic duress? Can economic duress arise where lawful acts or threats are made by one party in support of a demand which that party genuinely believes it is entitled to make?' — in other words, whether pressure can count as duress even when what the pressuring party is doing, and threatening to do, is itself perfectly lawful.

The case arose from a real commercial dispute: Times Travel, a small family-owned travel agency almost entirely dependent on selling PIAC's tickets, was offered a new agency contract that required it to waive its existing claims for unpaid commission. At first instance, the High Court held that Times Travel was entitled to avoid the contract with PIAC on the grounds of economic duress — before the case went on to the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, showing how much genuine legal uncertainty surrounds where legitimate hard bargaining ends and unlawful economic duress begins.