What’s “unjust” about unjust enrichment: an answer at last?

Journal article

The law of unjust enrichment has been dogged by a persistent question: what explains the claimant’s entitlement to restitution from the defendant? For Professor Birks, the answer lay in appeal to the simple intuition that the payor of a mistaken payment was entitled to its return;1 but this view of the law, which principally focuses on the combination of some enrichment of the defendant and some vitiation of the claimant’s will, is not short of modern-day detractors.2 However, the leading alternatives fare little better, leaving us with a still-open question. In School Facility Management Ltd v Governing Body of Christ the King College 3 we find the seeds of an answer: the express or implied conditions on which we act.

Authors: Georgiou, AYS

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Informa Business Intelligence
• Journal: Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
• Volume: 2021
• Issue: Part 1
• Pages: 63-71
• Publication date: 2021-03-12
• ISSN: 0306-2945
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR