Civil Code 1566, 1567, and 1570 establish a right to rescission in cases in which a person’s consent to a transaction was obtained by “menace”: threats of confinement, of unlawful violence to the person or his or her property, or of injury to a person’s character. This is effectively the civil version of extortion. So, Tran could state a claim for rescission of the transactions in which he paid Nguyen to keep her from exeucuting her threat to reveal her affair with Tran and their out-of-wedlock child to Tran’s wife. However, recover lay in contract, so Tran could not recover damages for his emotional distress either on the extortion/rescission claim or on a separately pleaded claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.