Template:Restitution capsule

Restitution — a.k.a unjust enrichment, or money had and received — is a claim made feasible through an imaginative synthesis of long-“forgotten” rules of the common law, dreamt up by Lord Goff to bring justice to little old ladies, welsh hoteliers and others dealt a short hand by the cosmic game.

Difficult cases involving such unfortunates (and the odd gambling-addict conveyancer) gave rise to an entire branch of civil law known as restitution, which sits uneasily between the common law of contract and tort, seeming as it does to confuse the two, and the law of equity.