INTOXICATION CIRCUMVENTION. 3 9 



state of intoxication as to entitle him to suspend the 

 charge, (a) 



If both parties be intoxicated, drunkenness may be proved 

 to show that parties did not seriously consent. (6) It would 

 appear, that a party seeking relief will be barred, unless he 

 makes his challenge immediately after coming to his 

 senses, (c). 



35. Circumvention and Undue Influence. — When con- 

 tracts have been obtained by artifice or fraud upon persons 

 who are of a weak and facile disposition, by reason of age, 

 disease, or other infirmity, or when force or fear is employed 

 to obtain consent to them, such as will shake a mind of ordi- 

 nary firmness, they are reducible. (cZ) Circumvention seems, 

 in such cases, to have the same effect as fraud ;(e) but facil- 

 ity and lesion, without fraud or circumvention, are not of 

 themselves grounds for setting aside obligations. (/) A 

 grossly inadequate price, the buyer being in pecuniary diffi- 

 culties, will not invalidate a sale, and will not, of itself, 

 afford ground for annulling a sale,((/) although such circum- 

 stances are strong evidence in support of fraud or circumven- 

 tion. Intimidation, however, combined with fraud and 

 circumvention, in order to induce a person of facile disposi- 

 tion to enter into a contract, is a ground of reduction, (/i) 



36. Rescission of the Contract. — The nullity of a sale, 

 on the grounds above referred to, must be judicially declared. 

 The contract, ostensibly, is valid and regular, and it subsists 

 till it is reduced. The Court, however, will not alter the 



(a) Polhh V. Burns, 1875, 2 E. 497. 

 (6) Jdvdlne, cit. 



(c) Pollok, cit. 



(d) B.C. i. 136 ; B. Pr. 14, and cases there cited. 



(e) Gray v. Binny, 1879, 7 R. 332, 347 ; but see Lord Kinloch in Love v. 

 Marshall, 1870, 9 M. 291, 297. 



(/) Scott V. Wilson, 1825, 3 Mur. 518, 526. 

 {(j) M'Kirdy v. Anstruther, 1839, 1 D. 855. 

 (h) Cairns v. Marianski, 1850, 12 D. 919, 1286 ; 1 M'Q. 212. 



