Actor Tom Hollander (imdb | wikipedia | image source) told an anecdote to Seth Meyers on the Late Night tv show (geoblocked NCB clip | YouTube clip), about when he received a bonus payslip meant for actor Tom Holland (imdb | wikipedia | image source). At the time, the two actors shared an agent, who obviously mixed up his own clients, so it’s not a surprise that the rest of us do too. For example, after the casting of Captain America: Civil War (2016 | imdb) was announced, I thought it was a brave decision to have Mr Collins play Spiderman! Hollander’s story relates to one of Holland’s subsequent outings as Spiderman. Hollander told Meyers that he got an email containing Holland’s first box office bonus payslip for The Avengers: Infinity War (2018 | imdb). Hollander said that it was for an “astonishing amount of money”.

Writing in The Guardian, Stuart Heritage commented that this is “a nice little insight into the world where there are too many famous Toms with similar surnames”. Indeed, not only are there too many Toms with the same surnames, sometimes they receive each other’s money, not merely the payslip.…

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I’ve written quite a bit on this blog about payors’ rights to recover mistaken payments from recipients. However, a column in today’s Irish Times makes an important practical point about it. A client of bank who had sought to make a payment of €20,000 into his daughter’s account in a different bank. He had the right details, but the payment never arrived in his daughter’s account. Dominic Coyle dispensed his usual sage, common sense, advice, and the banks are now being helpful, so the enquirer and his daughter will probably track down the money. Meanwhile, Dominic added, almost en passant:

By the way, not that it is relevant here, in cases where there has been an Iban error on the part of the person making the payment, repayment will be requested from the inadvertent recipient. However, I am told, somewhat surprisingly, that that depends on the recipient agreeing to the repatriation of the funds. Otherwise you’re apparently looking at legal action which could make your €20,000 look like chips.

So, he’s right that, where there is a mistake, the recipient of the mistaken payment must make restitution of the mistaken payment. However, he’s also right that, if the matter has to be vindicated in court, the costs could be prohibitive (even if, in principle, the costs should follow the event, so that the plaintiff would recover the mistaken payment and also be entitled to costs).…

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