Lord Blanesburgh:-

Before proceeding to define with particularity the issue which on this appeal their Lordships must determine, it may be well for clearness sake to set forth, as succinctly as possible, the somewhat involved story which leads up to it. All the parties live in Barbados. The appellant is a merchant there : the respondent Walcott a barrister-at-law, and the respondent Hutchinson a solicitor, both practising in the island. The respondent Taylor is a commercial agent who was for some time in the employment of the appellant.

For many years prior to 1925 the appellant had acted as agent on commission for a Newfoundland firm of Monroe and Company, and in later years for that firm's successors-in-business, the Monroe Export Company, Ltd. The appellant's agency was concerned mainly with the sale on commission of fish consigned by the Monroes to him in Barbados, and with the purchase in the island, also on commission, of molasses on their account.

In 1925 disputes arose between the Monroe Company and appellant with reference to his transactions, and in March 1925, the Company instituted against him in the Barbados Chancery Court a suit claiming full accounts on allegations, inter alia, that profits had been improperly withheld from the Company in connexion with his purchase of molasses, and that the appellant was suppressing his books in which his transactions on behalf of the Company were recorded. In that suit, to be referred to as the suit for accounts, respondent Walcott acted as counsel, and the respondent Hutchinson as solicitor for the Company, the appellant being duly represented by counsel and solicitors of his own. In the result on 5th June 1925, after a long trial, a decree in the suit adverse to the appellant was pronounced by the Acting Vice-Chancellor, who directed the accounts of the appellant's transactions to be reopened and ordered him to make payment together with the costs of suit of the amount found due on these reopened accounts when taken. A stay of execution was, however, upon terms granted to enable the appellant, if so advised to appeal.

Thereupon, indeed, within a few days, negotiations were on foot for a settlement. These were conducted by the respondents Walcott and Hutchinson on behalf of the Company with the appellant direct, that is to say, without the intervention of any legal advisers on his behalf. As a result of them a deed prepared by the respondent Hutchinson was on 18th June 1925, executed by the appellant. It bore that he had settled the Company's claims against him on all accounts by a payment in British currency of $15,000 thereby acknowledged to have been received, and by a mortgage thereby made of specified properties of his own to secure an additional sum the equivalent of $25,000 with interest. All further proceedings in the suit for accounts were to be discontinued.

This deed contained recitals which apparently the respondent Hutchinson now agrees were not in complete accord even with his own intent at the time and were less favourable to the appellant than they should have been. But the complaints of the appellant with reference to the transaction went far beyond any such matters of detail and as ventilated by him in correspondence and in legal proceedings to which reference must later be made were that he was left to act in the matter without legal advice ; that so far as the deed was a mortgage deed he executed it without understanding and indeed being misinformed as to its nature and that his execution of a deed at all was in effect the result of the pressure of the respondents Walcott and Hutchinson who threatened that, if he did not pay the $15,000 and execute the deed as presented to him, criminal proceedings would be taken for alleged misdeeds in relation to his purchases of molasses as agent for the Company.

Nor did the appellant keep to himself these charges of his against these respondents. In two letters, one of 2nd August 1925, and the other of 19th August 1925, addr