Coercion is a legal defense used when a person commits a crime due to the threat of violence or intimidation. To prove coercion, three elements must be proven, including reasonable fear, immediate harm, and serious harm. Coercion can also be used to dissolve contracts made under intimidation or threat of violence. Some areas allow contracts to be canceled within a specific time frame to thwart tough selling techniques.
Coercion is a legal term often used in a person’s criminal defense to mean that the person committed the action due to the threat of violence or intimidation. Specifically, coercion is used by a defendant who alleges that a person or agency was placing severe and potentially violent pressure on the person to commit the crime. Duress often means that immediate harm was indicated and that the defendant was unaware of or did not have a reasonable avenue to get away from the person or agency he threatened. To be effectively used, this defense usually also requires that the crime committed by the defendant be of lesser gravity than the action threatened against him or her. It can also be used in civil law to dissolve contracts entered into under intimidation or the threat of violence.
In order for a defendant or a lawyer representing him or her to actually prove that a crime was committed under duress, three elements must be proven. There must have been a reasonable fear on the part of the defendant, the fear must relate to a source of immediate harm and such harm must be of a serious nature such as grievous bodily injury or death. An example of all three of these elements would be a defendant who claims that someone else was holding him at gunpoint to illegally steal money from a cash register. The accused could demonstrate coercion by expressing fear of the gun, which is the immediate source of the harm and which could have caused serious injury or death to the accused.
Laws may also permit the use of coercion as a means of breaking contracts or having a contract declared unenforceable. If someone proves that they signed an agreement under duress, such as physical intimidation or violent threats, then a court can order the agreement voided or unenforceable. The threatening action that a contract allows a person to do, such as threatening legal consequences for non-payment of money agreed in a contract that states the party can use legal action to secure payment, is not sufficient to allow the cancellation of a contract.
Some areas have also passed laws to allow contracts to be canceled if they are made in a highly stressful but not necessarily coercive way. It’s about trying to thwart tough selling techniques and allowing a person to change their mind within a reasonable amount of time. Such laws often allow for a specific length of time in which such a contract can be canceled, and that length of time varies from region to region.
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