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.