Cookies?
Library Header Image
LSE Research Online LSE Library Services

'Direct transfers' in the law of unjust enrichment

Watterson, Stephen (2011) 'Direct transfers' in the law of unjust enrichment. Current Legal Problems, 64 (1). pp. 435-470. ISSN 0070-1998

Full text not available from this repository.
Identification Number: 10.1093/clp/cur012

Abstract

For a claim to lie in unjust enrichment, the law requires that the defendant's enrichment must have been gained ‘at the claimant's expense’. A popular account of this requirement, as it applies to personal claims, holds that as a general rule the law of unjust enrichment only reverses ‘direct’ transfers of value. There are good reasons why the law should not reverse many ‘indirect’ transfers, and some significant problems would be created if the law did so. Nevertheless, it is argued that these concerns do not require the courts to restrict the law's remedial potential by a categorical ‘direct transfer’ rule. They would do better to adopt a ‘but for’ causal test to identify qualifying transfers of value, leaving the task of liability containment to be tackled, in a better focused way, by other means. The article is solely concerned with the issues raised by personal claims in unjust enrichment; proprietary claims raise additional issues that are not considered.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/clp
Additional Information: © 2011 The author
Divisions: Law
Subjects: K Law > K Law (General)
Date Deposited: 29 Nov 2011 09:48
Last Modified: 15 Sep 2023 14:18
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/39779

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item