The legal concept of "unclean hands" is an affirmative defense that can be claimed if the plaintiff seeking equitable relief from the court has acted unethically or in bad faith regarding the matter in dispute. It means the plaintiff cannot ask the court for fairness or justice if they themselves have acted wrongly in relation to the issue. Some examples include a customer defending against a contract payment claim by proving the seller fraudulently induced them to sign, or a brokerage firm's confidential information theft case being dismissed because they had similarly stolen a competitor's information in the past. The defendant must show the plaintiff misled or wronged them regarding the specific matter, not just general immoral behavior, in order to claim the unclean hands defense
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The legal concept of "unclean hands" is an affirmative defense that can be claimed if the plaintiff seeking equitable relief from the court has acted unethically or in bad faith regarding the matter in dispute. It means the plaintiff cannot ask the court for fairness or justice if they themselves have acted wrongly in relation to the issue. Some examples include a customer defending against a contract payment claim by proving the seller fraudulently induced them to sign, or a brokerage firm's confidential information theft case being dismissed because they had similarly stolen a competitor's information in the past. The defendant must show the plaintiff misled or wronged them regarding the specific matter, not just general immoral behavior, in order to claim the unclean hands defense
The legal concept of "unclean hands" is an affirmative defense that can be claimed if the plaintiff seeking equitable relief from the court has acted unethically or in bad faith regarding the matter in dispute. It means the plaintiff cannot ask the court for fairness or justice if they themselves have acted wrongly in relation to the issue. Some examples include a customer defending against a contract payment claim by proving the seller fraudulently induced them to sign, or a brokerage firm's confidential information theft case being dismissed because they had similarly stolen a competitor's information in the past. The defendant must show the plaintiff misled or wronged them regarding the specific matter, not just general immoral behavior, in order to claim the unclean hands defense
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
The legal concept of "unclean hands" is an affirmative defense that can be claimed if the plaintiff seeking equitable relief from the court has acted unethically or in bad faith regarding the matter in dispute. It means the plaintiff cannot ask the court for fairness or justice if they themselves have acted wrongly in relation to the issue. Some examples include a customer defending against a contract payment claim by proving the seller fraudulently induced them to sign, or a brokerage firm's confidential information theft case being dismissed because they had similarly stolen a competitor's information in the past. The defendant must show the plaintiff misled or wronged them regarding the specific matter, not just general immoral behavior, in order to claim the unclean hands defense
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Unclean Hands
The legal concept of Unclean Hands is a useful affirmative defense in lawsuits brought against you by creditors. Rather than go into a long protracted definition, we thought we'd give you some of the definitions from various legal sites around the web. We've also provided some examples to help you wrap your head around the idea.
Some Definitions:
• The clean hands doctrine is a rule of law that someone bringing a lawsuit or motion and asking the court for equitable relief must be innocent of wrongdoing or unfair conduct relating to the subject matter of his/her claim. It is an affirmative defense that the defendant may claim the plaintiff has "unclean hands". However, this defense may not be used to put in issue conduct of the plaintiff unrelated to plaintiff's claim. Therefore, plaintiff's unrelated corrupt actions and general immoral character would be irrelevant. The defendant must show that plaintiff misled the defendant or has done something wrong regarding the matter under consideration. The wrongful conduct may be of a legal or moral nature, as long as it relates to the matter in issue. • A legal doctrine which is a defense to a complaint, which states that a party who is asking for a judgment cannot have the help of the court if he/she has done anything unethical in relation to the subject of the lawsuit. Thus, if a defendant can show the plaintiff had "unclean hands," the plaintiff's complaint will be dismissed or the plaintiff will be denied judgment. Unclean hands is a common "affirmative defense" pleaded by defendants and must be proved by the defendant. • Unclean hands, sometimes clean hands doctrine or dirty hands doctrine is an equitable defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is not entitled to obtain an equitable remedy on account of the fact that the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith with respect to the subject of the complaint— that is, with "unclean hands". The defendant has the burden of proof to show the plaintiff is not acting in good faith. The doctrine is often stated as "those seeking equity must do equity" or "equity must come with clean hands".
Examples:
• For example, if a seller sues a customer for payments on a contract, defendant
may claim plaintiff has unclean hands because he fraudulently induced him to sign the contract. A court of equity will not decide issues of fairness and justice if it is shown that the person asking for such justice has acted wrongly in regard to the issue at hand. • In another example, when a brokerage firm claimed that its confidential client information was being pilfered by the competition, the court held that the firm did not come to court with "clean hands" since the court found that firm demonstrated a similar lack of regard for the competitor's confidential client information when it snared the same broker six years earlier. • Hank Hardnose sues Grace Goodenough for breach of contract for failure to pay the full amount for construction of an addition to her house. Goodenough proves that Hardnose had shown her faked estimates from subcontractors to justify his original bid to Goodenough. • This includes attempting to deprive defendant of his right to petition the government through use of litigation to harass him, falsification/concealment of crucial evidence, improper attempts to depose Main Action jurors and court personnel, efforts to deprive defendant of counsel, key witnesses and evidence, and subjecting him to the "Fair Game" policy.
