Module 4

Restitution and unjust enrichment: giving back the gain, profits from wrongs and proprietary claims

Compensation looks at what the claimant lost. Restitution looks at what the defendant gained. The difference seems small, but it opens a different set of claims and a different set of remedies. Someone who pays a bill twice by mistake has lost money, but their claim to the second payment does not depend on any wrong by the recipient: the recipient has simply been enriched at their expense, and it would be unjust to keep it. A trustee who makes a secret profit from trust property has not necessarily caused the beneficiaries any loss, but the law makes the trustee hand over the profit. A buyer who has paid a deposit for a contract that failed is entitled to its return, and a builder who has done work for a person who did not ask for it, but has accepted the benefit, may be entitled to be paid. This module sets out the law of unjust enrichment and its related remedies: when a benefit must be given back, what it is worth, when a claimant may recover the defendant’s profit from a wrong, how a claimant can follow its property into the hands of others and obtain priority over creditors, and what defences are open. It ends with the Restitution Checker, a tool that walks through the questions on invented facts.

General education on civil remedies, using invented cases, businesses and people. It states common principles in simplified form and does not describe any one country's law, which differs and changes; rules on damages, punitive damages, costs, limitation periods and enforcement in particular vary. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the instruction of a law school or advice from a qualified lawyer.