Events
CCTL Obligations Lab Asia Seminar – ‘The Scope and Structure of Unjust Enrichment’ by Prof. Duncan Sheehan (Online)
4 Jun 2024
5:00pm – 6:00pm (HKT)
Online via Zoom
Prof. Duncan Sheehan
Duncan Sheehan is Professor of Business Law at the University of Leeds in the UK and specialises in unjust enrichment, trusts and personal property law.
The law of unjust enrichment has attracted heated debate, including about its very existence; however, one important debate has been the extent to which unjust enrichment is structured around unjust factors such as mistake, duress or failure of consideration or around a civilian concept of absence of basis and performance. Drawing on comparisons with mixed systems such as Scots and South African law, the seminar will explore the structure of the common law of unjust enrichment, arguing that English law mixes the two approaches. English law recognises both performance claims and non-performance claims and the seminar suggests that the traditional four questions analysis around enrichment, “at the expense of”, unjust factors and defences obscures as much as it illuminates. Performance claims, known as condictiones in South African law, involve a deliberate intentional transfer of money or chattels or the deliberate intentional performance of a service vis-a-vis the defendant. Non-performance claims are all other unjust enrichment claims. The seminar explores the variety of non-performance claims that English law recognises, such as improvement and encroachment claims and a version of the actio de in rem verso. The seminar concludes by showing how the structure elaborated is reflected in how “mistake” claims work and shows that English law still cannot do without unjust factors in some form.
The seminar is based on arguments found in the presenter’s new book The Scope and Structure of Unjust Enrichment published in February 2024 with Hart Bloomsbury.
Language: English
CPD credits are available upon application and subject to accreditation by the Law Society of Hong Kong (currently pending).
