Return of Unjust Enrichment: What Was Received and What Must Be Returned

Abstract

This volume asks when, and how much, a benefit whose legal cause has ceased must be returned. The beneficiary's good or bad faith and the existing benefit, as well as the exceptions for payment of a non-existent debt and performance for an illegal cause, must be distinguished so that the absence of legal cause does not automatically become the return of everything received. The path to relief opens where a link between the benefit lacking legal cause and the loss is recognized, no restriction on return applies, and the scope is specified by such factors as good or bad faith and the existing benefit, and closes where repayment was made with knowledge that no debt existed, or the restriction on return of performance for an illegal cause applies, and no statutory exception exists either. The six sections address, in turn, the link between benefit and loss, payment made with knowledge, the restriction on return for illegal causes, the original thing and its value, the scope of good faith and bad faith, and the point at which knowledge changes. The strongest counterargument is as follows. Narrowing liability to the existing benefit produces the result that a person who has spent another's money escapes return. Confiscation and additional collection of criminal proceeds and the calculation of fund flows are not addressed in this volume.