Fraud Vitiating Consent In Battery Cases

Factors that Vitiate (Negate) Consent

(a) Fraud

If consent was based on a fraudulently-induced belief, it is vitiated.

1. Defendant must be aware of/responsible for the misapprehension

2. Fraud will only negate consent if it relates to the nature of the act and not collateral matters (i.e., man who lies about his marital status to induce a woman to have sex does not commit the tort of battery against her).

R. v. Williams (1923): W talked student in to giving him oral sex by telling her it would improve her singing voice. Court decided that this was fraud vitiating her consent because she didn’t know she was engaging in a sexual act.


Me: On this law a disinction is between fraud inducing misapprehension about the act
the act itself and not about matters incidental to the act itself.

That law cuts against the notion of rape by deception noted below.