At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at law, the loss must involve damage to property, or mental or physical injury; pure economic loss is rarely recognised for the award of damages.
A quasi-contract is a fictional contract recognised by a court. The notion of a quasi-contract can be traced to Roman law and is still a concept used in some modern legal systems. Quasi contract laws have been deduced from the Latin statement "Nemo debet locupletari ex aliena jactura", which proclaims that no man should grow rich out of another person's loss. It was one of the central doctrines of Roman law.
Quantum meruit is a Latin phrase meaning "what one has earned". In the context of contract law, it means something along the lines of "reasonable value of services".
The forms of action were the different procedures by which a legal claim could be made during much of the history of the English common law. Depending on the court, a plaintiff would purchase a writ in Chancery which would set in motion a series of events eventually leading to a trial in one of the medieval common law courts. Each writ entailed a different set of procedures and remedies which together amounted to the "form of action".
Restitution and unjust enrichment is the field of law relating to gains-based recovery. In contrast with damages, restitution is a claim or remedy requiring a defendant to give up benefits wrongfully obtained. Liability for restitution is primarily governed by the "principle of unjust enrichment": A person who has been unjustly enriched at the expense of another is required to make restitution.
Assumpsit, or more fully, action in assumpsit, was a form of action at common law used to enforce what are now called obligations arising in tort and contract; and in some common law jurisdictions, unjust enrichment. The origins of the action can be traced to the 14th century, when litigants seeking justice in the royal courts turned from the writs of covenant and debt to the trespass on the case.
A constructive trust is an equitable remedy imposed by a court to benefit a party that has been wrongfully deprived of its rights due to either a person obtaining or holding a legal property right which they should not possess due to unjust enrichment or interference, or due to a breach of fiduciary duty, which is intercausative with unjust enrichment and/or property interference. It is a type of implied trust.
Economic torts, which are also called business torts, are torts that provide the common law rules on liability which arise out of business transactions such as interference with economic or business relationships and are likely to involve pure economic loss.
Failure of consideration is a technical legal term referring to situations in which one person confers a benefit upon another upon some condition or basis ("consideration") which fails to materialise or subsist. It is also referred to as "failure of basis". It is an 'unjust factor' for the purposes of the law of unjust enrichment. Where there is a "total failure of consideration" the claimant can seek restitution of the benefit by bringing an action in unjust enrichment against the defendant. Historically speaking, this was as a quasi-contractual claim known as an action for money had and received to the plaintiff's use for a consideration that wholly failed. The orthodox view is that it is necessary for any relevant contract to be ineffective, for example because it is discharged for breach, void ab initio or frustrated. However, it will be available on a subsisting contract where it does not undermine the contractual allocation of risk.
Fibrosa Spolka Akcyjna v Fairbairn Lawson Combe Barbour Ltd[1942] UKHL 4 is a leading House of Lords decision on the doctrine of frustration in English contract law.
The English law of unjust enrichment is part of the English law of obligations, along with the law of contract, tort, and trusts. The law of unjust enrichment deals with circumstances in which one person is required to make restitution of a benefit acquired at the expense of another in circumstances which are unjust.
Change of position is a defence to a claim in unjust enrichment which operates to reduce a defendant's liability to the extent to which his or her circumstances have changed as a consequence of an enrichment.
Attorney General v Blake[2000] UKHL 45, [2001] 1 AC 268 is a leading English contract law case on damages for breach of contract. It established that in some circumstances, where ordinary remedies are inadequate, restitutionary damages may be awarded.
Baltic Shipping Company v Dillon, the Mikhail Lermontov case, is a leading Australian contract law case, on the incorporation of exclusion clauses and damages for breach of contract or restitution for unjust enrichment.
The English law of Restitution is the law of gain-based recovery. Its precise scope and underlying principles remain a matter of significant academic and judicial controversy. Broadly speaking, the law of restitution concerns actions in which one person claims an entitlement in respect of a gain acquired by another, rather than compensation for a loss.
BP Exploration Co (Libya) v Hunt [1983] 2 AC 352 is an English contract and unjust enrichment case, concerning the frustration of an agreement.
Illegality in English law is a potential ground in English contract law, tort, trusts or UK company law for a court to refuse to enforce an obligation. The illegality of a transaction, either because of public policy under the common law, or because of legislation, potentially means no action directly concerning the deal will be heard by the courts. The doctrine is reminiscent of the Latin phrase "Ex turpi causa non oritur actio", meaning "no cause of action arises from a wrong". The primary problem arising when courts refuse to enforce an agreement is the extent to which an innocent party may recover any property already conveyed through the transaction. Hence, illegality raises important questions for English unjust enrichment law.
Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC[1996] UKHL 12, [1996] AC 669 is a leading English trusts law case concerning the circumstances under which a resulting trust arises. It held that such a trust must be intended, or must be able to be presumed to have been intended. In the view of the majority of the House of Lords, presumed intention to reflect what is conscionable underlies all resulting and constructive trusts.
Moses v Macferlan (1760) 2 Bur 1005 is a foundational case in the law of restitution holding that in certain circumstances such as when money is paid by mistake, for failed consideration or under oppression; the law will allow the money to be recovered.
The local authorities swaps litigation refers to a series of cases during the 1990s under English law relating to interest rate swap transactions entered into between banks and local authorities. The House of Lords ruled that such transactions were unlawful. As a result of the decision over 200 separate actions were filed as hundreds of interest rate swap contracts had to be unwound by the courts at great expense.