ABSTRACT
The topics to be covered in this chapter have close links with those dealt with Chapter 19. We are concerned again with ways in which a person can seek compensation for losses, or, perhaps more accurately, avoid suffering a loss. In this case, however, we are dealing with situations which have a close connection with contract, but where the standard contract remedies are unavailable because the agreement has failed in some way, other than as a result of breach by one of the parties. This might be because their attempt to make a binding agreement has been deemed to be void ab initio, for example, as a result of a common mistake,1 or because their negotiations have never succeeded in reaching the stage of a mutually acceptable contract. We are therefore concerned with situations which have some relationship to contract (which is the reason why in the past this area has been know as ‘quasi-contract’) but which strictly speaking fall outside its remit. This area can be regarded as part of a more general area of law, which has come to be known as ‘restitution’.2 We have looked at this concept in Chapter 19 in respect of the award of damages on a ‘restitutionary basis’ for breach of contract. Here we are concerned with the areas where restitution may be awarded to parties where there is no breach of contract. Central to this more general concept is the idea of ‘unjust enrichment’. Restitution comprises a body of rules for recovery of money or property in order to prevent a person becoming ‘unjustly enriched’. As Lord Wright put it in Fibrosa Spolka Ackyjna v Fairbairn Lawson Combe Barbour Ltd:3
It is English law’s response to this requirement in situations which are closely related to contract that we are concerned with in the rest of this chapter. There are two main topics to consider: the recovery of money, and the payment for work which has been done.
