Interplay between undue influence, usury, and immoral contracts in the light of the recent case law of Hungary
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46941/2022.e2.33-41Keywords:
undue influence, usurious contract, unfair exploitation, contracts contrary to good morals, good faith in contract law, gift contractAbstract
In this short writing, we intended to show the recent tendency in the Hungarian judicial practice, a slight movement to rediscover the importance and the great variety of the subjective elements of usury contract, focusing on the so-called undue influence as a subjective condition of the invalidity. However, a twofold finding should be expressed here. First, the conceptual scopes of these grounds are not totally separated from each other, although, a distinction should be made, moreover, not only between the undue influence and other defects of contractual intention but also between usurious contract, immoral contract and unfair exploitation, with the observation that the latter ground of invalidity has only historical importance in Hungarian law. Second, as the former judicial practice placed too much importance on the assessment of the reciprocity condition in usury cases, in the cases of the gift contracts concluded by the party under the undue influence the court constitutes the invalidity based on immorality, not on usury.
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