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[1] of the common law, dreamt up by Lord Goff[2] 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, a common lawyer’s duck-billed platypus: an ancient civil action, latterly back in fashion, that sounds neither in contract — there is none — or tort — there has been none — but sits uneasily between them, in its own jurisprudential space: a sort of law of equity for people who don’t like the law of equity.
- ↑ “Indebitatis assumpsit”, for example.
- ↑ See, particularly, Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd and Barclays Bank Ltd v WJ Simms