3 Voidable Contract — Free Consent and Its Vitiators

Consent: the parties' free-and-voluntary assent (the Code's consent provisions — consensus ad idem, the meeting of minds, plus the consent's freedom). The prescribed Full-Bench authority: Damodar Ropways and Construction Company v. Ministry of Finance (NKP 2073, Vol. 5, D.No. 9591 — the Full Bench's free-consent ruling, as annotated) — the case to read for the Court's authoritative treatment of consent's vitiators in the government-contract context. The five vitiators (the Code's list — with the consequences): 1. Coercion/duress: the physical-and-psychological compulsion (the threat to person, property, or reputation inducing the assent); the duress-to-goods and the economic duress extensions (the modern law's widening — the illegitimate pressure's doctrine); the burden-and- proof questions; the consequence: voidable at the coerced party's option; the restitution- following-rescission; 2. Undue influence: the relationship of confidence-and-dependence (the doctor-patient, guru-disciple, trustee-beneficiary, the dominating-bargaining positions) + the unconscionable transaction (the presumption's logic — the burden shifting to the dominant party to prove fairness); the Nepali practice (the family-and-guardianship transactions, the debt-bondage patterns of the villages — the haliya-era's unconscionable loans as the historic illustration); the consequence: voidable; the Court's equity powers (the set-aside on terms); 3. Fraud: the knowing deception (the false statement of fact, the active concealment, the promise-without-intention-to-perform, the deceptive practices) — the dolus; the elements (the representation; its falsity; the knowledge/intent; the inducement; the reliance); the silence's…