Category Archives: Unjust enrichment
Manor-Percival and Chambers, ‘Restitution and Unjust Enrichment: Promoting Justice in Business and Human Rights Litigation’
ABSTRACT Using Josiya v British American Tobacco (BAT) as a case study, this article explores the growing potential of unjust enrichment to become an additional route to redress in business and human rights (BHR) litigation. Josiya, in which over 7,000 Malawian tobacco farmers are suing BAT for exploitative practices, marks a significant development in attempts […]
Leow and Liau, ‘A Comparative Common Law Study on Restitution from the State’
ABSTRACT When should restitution from the State be available? The jurisdictions examined in this paper – England, Canada, Australia – once gave a common answer to this question, but they no longer do, for reasons concerning both these jurisdictions’ constitutional and unjust enrichment laws. The aim of this article is to provide an account of […]
Andrew Burrows, ‘The Relationship between Contract and Unjust Enrichment’
… The relationship between the law of contract and the law of unjust enrichment has long perplexed courts and commentators. In considering the relationship afresh, I want to consider several leading cases including a Supreme Court case in which, along with Lord Leggatt, I dissented, namely Barton v Morris. It is helpful to start with […]
Andrew Phang, ‘Unjust enrichment revisited’
ABSTRACT The present article revisits the formulation for the law of unjust enrichment as set out by the late Professor Peter Birks. It argues, from a theoretical perspective, that this formulation is framed at too general a level of abstraction. And, from an historical perspective, it argues, first, that the seminal work by Goff and […]
Dharmapala and Garoupa, ‘The Law of Restitution for Void Contracts: An Economic Analysis’
ABSTRACT This paper develops an economic analysis of the application of the law of restitution to the case of void contracts, when agreements may be unenforceable due to legal invalidity. It develops a simple model in which contracting parties’ agreements potentially impose external harms. The analysis focuses on how alternative restitution regimes affect contracting incentives […]
Albert Tan, ‘Final, but Not Yours: Protocol Finality, Private Law and The Allocation of Digital-Asset Loss’
ABSTRACT A system for ordering transactions is not a law of ownership, and the Bitcoin protocol was never meant to be the second thing. It settles the sequence in which transactions are recorded. It does not decide who, as between rival claimants, is entitled to what has moved. The distinction is not a technicality. It […]
Parth Singh, ‘Contractual Subordination and Restitution after Breach – Quantum Meruit for the Defaulting Performer in New York Law’
ABSTRACT The hardest restitution problem in contract law is not whether breach is wrongful. It is whether the recipient of partial performance has a legal basis for retaining the net benefit of that performance without paying for it. New York law intensifies that problem. On one side, Clark-Fitzpatrick and Corsello make clear that quasi-contract is […]
Alex Sze, ‘A unified understanding of constructive trust’
ABSTRACT The article broaches the Unified Understanding on constructive trusts where institutional constructive trusts with proprietary consequences arise when a person is impressed upon a proprietary duty to account for property received towards the beneficiary. This resolves the inconsistencies arising from recent apex court judgments of Byers, Hui Chun Ping, Rukhadze and Hotel Portfolio, and […]
Suzette Malveaux, ‘Immortal Justice: Why the Henrietta Lacks Family Merits Restitution Today’
ABSTRACT Almost three quarters of a century have passed since Henrietta Lacks had her cells biopsied from her cervix without her knowledge or consent. Upon discovering that Henrietta’s cells were immortal, scientists have been able to solve the most vexing medical problems of modern times and save countless lives worldwide. Aware of the cells’ scandalous […]
Deebu R, ‘On The Rights of Wives Against Unjust Enrichment In Return Of Gold Cases’
ABSTRACT In matrimonial cases to recover gold, Family Courts mistakenly specify an alternate value that is recoverable if they cannot return the gold itself. However, when husbands preferred appeals, these cases would remain in litigation for years, and the value of gold would skyrocket. This would allow the husband to pay the lesser amount specified […]