Involuntary Payment

A payment of money upon an illegal or unjust demand, where a party is advised of all the facts, can only be considered involuntary when it is made to secure the release of person or property from detention, or where the payee is armed with apparent authority to seize upon one or the other and to prevent this the pajmient is made.

57 111. App. 240; 94 111. App. 526.

What shall constitute the compulsion or coercion which the law will recognize as sufficient to render the payments involuntary, may often be a question of difficulty. It may be said in general that there must be some actual or threatened exercise of power, possessed or supposed to be possessed by the party exacting or receiving the payment, over the person or property of another, from which the latter has no other means of immediate relief.

100 Pa. St. 346; 18 Cal. 272, 407; 46 Cal. 698; 94 111. App. 526; 2 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (4th Ed.), § 943.