Common Laws: Unilateral Mistake as to Identity

* Common laws: Unilateral Mistake as to Identity- Lewis v Averay

There are 3 types of mistakes that usually happen in common law, such as: Common mistake, Mutual mistake, and unilateral mistake. Since this paper is going to discuss about unilateral mistake, there are several ways of solving cases of unilateral mistake which are used by Common Law to solve cases. Usually it depends on the characteristics of the mistake itself, these are several categories of characteristic that are usually used to identify mistake, unilateral mistakes as to the terms of either the offer or acceptance, unilateral mistakes to identity, and unilateral mistakes as to the nature of the contractual document signed . As been told previously, this paper will discuss more about unilateral mistake.

The unilateral mistake as to identity usually happens when parties are met face to face and one of the party is using fake identity to make a contract, then there's a possibility that a contract to be void. When making a binding contract, identity is not really required, as long as each party knows with whom they are making a contract is enough to sign the contract without checking further of the identity. Furthermore, unilateral mistake as to identity happens when an innocent third party is involved. In the case of Lewis v Averay , Lewis was met face to face with Richard Green, where the law will treat the contract between Lewis and Green as voidable, and giving the legal ownership of the goods to the innocent party, who is Averay. By this mistake happened, Lewis would totally lost his ownership to the car he sold to Richard Green. Moreover, the law of mistake is uncertain and confusing.