Category Archives: Unjust enrichment
Chua and Ang, ‘Punitive Damages: Intradisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives’
Abstract This article aims to elucidate the reasons for an award for punitive damages in private law. In particular, two research methods are employed simultaneously. First, employing a comparative approach between Singapore and the United States, various nuances in judicial attitudes emerge and give rise to a trove of data for interpretation. Second, an intra-disciplinary […]
Aisha Shah, ‘The rule in Ex Parte James’
INTRODUCTION This article explores the Ex p James rule. The rule is important for the reason that, when it is successfully invoked against an officer of the court, the officer of the court cannot insist on their strict legal rights. It thus allows the court to disregard legal principles, in a legal system governed by […]
John (Ching Jack) Choi, ‘Postponing the inexplicable: “retrospective” mistakes of law’
ABSTRACT This article examines how s 32(1)(c) of the Limitation Act 1980 applies to restitutionary claims founded on ‘retrospective’ mistakes of law. Criticising the test in Test Claimants in the FII Group Litigation v HMRC (No 2), it presents a model which confines s 32(1)(c) to ‘ordinary’ mistakes of law. € (Westlaw) John (Ching Jack) […]
Frederik Peeraer, ‘Restitution under an Illegal Contract: From Purpose to Finality and Civil Fines’
ABSTRACT This article delves into the complex issue of restitution under an illegal contract, a topic brought into focus by the UK Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Patel v Mirza (2016). It contends that the current trend towards discretion often leads to unclear outcomes, underscoring the limitations of a flexible approach. Drawing from examples in […]
Sagi Peari, ‘Should No Further Books Be Written on the Law of Unjust Enrichment?’
Peter Birks’ four-limb formula of unjust enrichment is well known. According to this formula, the plaintiff should show (a) a transfer of value from them to the defendant (aka ‘enrichment’); (b) a causal link between the defendant’s enrichment and the plaintiff (aka ‘at the plaintiff’s expense’); and (c) the existence of one of the previously-recognized […]
‘An overpayment into your bank account is not money for nothing; an overactive ATM does not dispense free money’
Much and all as it is fashionable to complain about Google now, sometimes the algorithm gets it just right. Over the weekend, my feed served me this headline: ‘Man who was accidentally paid 330 times his salary quits and disappears’ (Unilad, 19 July 2024). Perhaps it is not my usual sort of news source, but […]
Gordon-Tapiero and Kaplan, ‘Unjust Enrichment by Algorithm’
ABSTRACT Social media platforms have become enormously powerful, accumulating wealth at an alarming rate and influencing public opinion with unprecedented efficiency. Platforms use algorithms that promote discriminatory, divisive, extreme, and false content. In recent years, content promoted by social media platforms fueled a series of calamities: the spread of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the […]
Rory Gregson, ‘Subrogation, Marshalling, and Property’
ABSTRACT Subrogation and marshalling are two controversial sources of property rights. They are both said to allow one party to stand into another’s place and exercise the latter’s property rights. This is strange. Why should the law allow one person to take the benefit of another’s property rights? Are there any good reasons for subrogation […]
Roger Derrington, ‘Snark Hunting: A Search for Tracing’s Underlying Rationale’
ABSTRACT The underlying rationale for tracing in equity is a much-debated topic and has seemingly resulted in more theories than there are commentators. For a relatively minor area of the law, it has attracted substantially more than its fair share of attention from academic theorists, each of whom vie to include it as part of […]
John Choi, ‘Unjust Enrichment in Malaysia: “At the Expense of”’
ABSTRACT When authoritative recognition of unjust(ified) enrichment as an independent cause of action was given in Dream Property Sdn Bhd v Atlas Housing Sdn Bhd [2015] 2 Malayan Law Journal 441, the Federal Court simultaneously imported the four-stage analytical framework (‘enrichment’ ‘at the plaintiff’s expense’ in circumstances which render the enrichment ‘unjust(ified)’ and where no […]