Grossdisparity of the unfairexploitation: models for future regulation in cases of contractual economic imbalance

Abstract

European Contractual Law has come up with some new legal concepts of avoiding contracts that involve a great disparity between the obligations. New remedies
are called gross disparity, unfair advantage or unfair exploitation, and they
refuse to uphold contracts that appear to be the result of some bargaining weakness on one side and conscious advantage-taking on the other, and they allow avoiding this kind of legal acts.The majority of the European civil codes give the possibility of avoiding a contract as a consequence of an unfair exploitation or gross disparity. Some Codes put more emphasis on the personal situation of the weakness party and others on the damages arising from the unduly onerous or unfair contracts. The new Proposal of Modernization of the Spanish Civil Code on the contractual fields, by regulating the unfair advantage concept, has followed the new European contractual Law, sidelining the current Spanish Law.