Lydia Danon, Rosie Wild and Andrew Flynn reflect on a useful and enduring tool for parties to a contractual claim and their lawyers
- Looks at evolution and present-day application of The Rule (from Pigot’s Case in 1614) in fraud law.
- How The Rule interacts with other legal remedies.
One of the more striking aspects of the common law tradition is how long-forgotten precedents, which survive through contemporary accounts in historic case reports, can endure in their practical impact centuries later. Such rules can languish as their relevance and applicability fail to resonate with different social norms and changes to the conduct of business from which they evolved. This article considers whether the rule in Pigot’s Case (1614) 1 Co Rep 26b, 77 ER 1177 (The Rule) is ripe to be plucked from (near) obscurity to be used as a weapon in a fraud lawyer’s arsenal, or if it should be abandoned to the annals of history.
The Rule
According to the 33rd edition of Chitty on Contracts, The Rule today holds
