Report No. 66

1.4. Need for amendment of section 6.-

While, therefore, a radical change in the principle of the existing section is not required, there is an urgent need for amendments which will more effectively carry out the principle which underlies the provisions of section 6. It is in this context, that we have considered it proper to examine section 6 at length. It so happens that apart from the practical importance of section 6, it bears examination from the theoretical point of view, as it deals with the interesting subject of the mode of assignment of an actionable claim.

For historical reasons, the freedom of assignment of actionable claims was, in common law, be set with technical difficulties throughout its history. Though there was no fundamental objection, in the laymind, to such assignments, a sound and uniform doctrine of assignments failed to develop in common law, and the kind of assistance which the law courts could give was "surreptitious and spasmodic".1 Section 6 gives a positive mandate as to the effect of an arrangement.

1. Bailey Assignment of Debts, (1932) 48 LQR 547.