Category: Restitution

Tort journal; and unjust enrichment

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Cover of Journal, via publishers siteThe Journal of European Tort Law (also here and here) is officially launched today at the 9th Annual Conference on European Tort Law. A joint-venture between the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) and the Institute for European Tort Law (ETL) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, it is the first law review to be dedicated to the analysis and development of tort law in Europe. The General Editor is Professor Ken Oliphant, and it is published by de Gruyter, Berlin. The editors welcome all queries and submissions. The table of contents of the first volume:

  • Helmut Koziol & Ken Oliphant Preface (2010) 1 JETL 1
  • Lord Bingham of Cornhill The Uses of Tort (2010) 1 JETL 3
  • Nils Jansen The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations: Rethinking the Divisions of Tort, Unjustified Enrichment, and Contract Law (2010) 1 JETL 16
  • Vaia Karapanou & Louis Visscher Towards a Better Assessment of Pain and Suffering Damages (2010) 1 JETL 48
  • Michael G Faure & Niels J Philipsen Fees for Claim Settlement in the Field of Personal Injury: Empirical Evidence from the Netherlands (2010) 1 JETL 75
  • Ulrich Magnus Why is US Tort Law so Different?
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Conference on Restitution of Overpaid Tax

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Restitution

'The Tax Collectors' by van Reymerswaele, via wikimedia commonsThe School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, Pump Court Tax Chambers and One Essex Court are delighted to announce a conference on

Restitution of Overpaid Tax

which will take place in Merton College Oxford on the weekend of Friday 9 and Saturday 10 July 2010.

In Woolwich Equitable Building Society v Inland Revenue Commissioners [1993] AC 70 (HL), the House of Lords held that taxes unlawfully exacted by the Revenue are recoverable by the taxpayer as of right. The recent decisions of the Court of Appeal in Test Claimants In the Franked Investment Group Litigation v Commissioners of the Inland Revenue [2010] EWCA Civ 103 (23 February 2010) and FJ Chalke Ltd v Revenue & Customs [2010] EWCA Civ 313 (25 March 2010) demonstrate that many fundamental elements of the Woolwich principle still remain to be resolved. Eminent contributors will explore the general issue of restitution of overpaid taxes from various perspectives – for example, the tax background, various private law claims, alternative public law approaches, defences, and remedies – and in various jurisdictions (such as Australia, Canada, the EU, Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand, as well as the UK).

Details Programme | Contributors | Abstracts | Venue | Bookings | Contact | Updates…

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Espionage is a serious business: freedom of speech and restitutionary remedies

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Freedom of Expression, Restitution

Cover of 'Decent Interval' by Frank Snepp, via his siteOver sixty years ago, the Faculty of Laws at University College London established the Current Legal Problems lecture series and accompanying annual volume as a major reference point for a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. The lectures are held at the Faculty of Law, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1 from 6-7pm; they are open to the public and free of charge. This week‘s current legal issue is:

Spies Like Us? Frank Snepp and George Blake: Freedom of Speech and Restitutionary Remedies

“Espionage is a serious business” sang a moderately famous Irish pop singer of the 1980s. And so it is. It can be even more of a business when former spies seek to publish their memoirs, and things can get very serious indeed if they fail to seek the clearance of their former spymasters in advance. The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in Snepp v US 444 US 507 (1980) and of the House of Lords in AG v Blake [2001] 1 AC 268; [2000] UKHL 45 (27 July 2000) make a fascinating pair of cases in which former spies (unsuccessfully) argued that a restitutionary remedy against uncleared publication of their memoirs infringed their speech rights.…

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No UKSC Christmas Present for Vodafone

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vodafone logo, via vodafone siteCases dealing with the consequences of the European Court of Justice, striking down national tax provisions as inconsistent with EU law, just seem to keep on coming. In C-196/04 Cadbury Schweppes v Commissioners of Inland Revenue [2006] ECR I-7995 [2006] EUECJ C-196/04 (12 September 2006) the ECJ called the Controlled Foreign Companies taxation provisions of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 into question, having regard to EU law. Important restitution questions would then have arisen. However, in Vodafone 2 v HM Revenue & Customs [2009] EWCA Civ 446 (22 May 2009) the Court of Appeal (reversing the High Court [2008] EWHC 1569 (Ch) (04 July 2008)) nevertheless concluded that the provisions were susceptible to an interpretation conforming with EU law. The question now to be decided by the Tax Tribunal is therefore whether the vodafone arrangment is within that interpretation on the facts. But this appears to be the end of the line so far as the law is concerned. Just before Christmas, the UKSC blog reported that the UK Supreme Court declined to give Vodafone a Christmas present of leave to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision:

It was widely expected that this case would be heard by the Supreme Court.

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Tory Island and Unjust Enrichment – the conclusion

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| Restitution, Tory Island

Oyster Pots on Tory Island, by MarsW via FlickrI wrote last April and again last July about the case brought by film-maker Neville Presho, whose holiday home on Tory Island had disappeared in his absence, replaced by a car park for an adjacent hotel. In July, Murphy J held that Mr Presho was entitled to a comparable dwelling on the island or its market value. The matter was adjourned to last week when the judge heard there were significant differences between the sides over what valuation could be put on an equivalent house in Tory. Today, in the High Court, Murphy J awarded Mr Presho €46,000 as damages for trespass and interference with his property (RTÉ news | Irish Times breaking news. Update Irish Examiner | Irish Independent | Irish Times). At an earlier stage in the proceedings, Murphy J had suggested that these damages could be calculated to prevent the defendant’s unjust enrichment, but there is no hint of this in today’s press reports. In the absence of written judgments in this saga, this will probably have to count as another colourful but missed opportunity in the development of the Irish law of restitution for unjust enrichment.…

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Only in California – breach of contract and unjust enrichment

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| Contract, Restitution

Carrie Prejean via the BBC websiteBy Meredith R Miller on ContractsProf Blog, a story that needs no further commentary:

Was Carrie Prejean Unjustly Enriched? (Nudge Nudge Wink Wink)

You’ll undoubtedly recall that, back in May, we mentioned that Miss California USA (aka Donald Trump) might terminate then-Miss California Carrie Prejean for breach of contract; Prejean was in fact de-crowned, and she sued the pageant organizers for a whole host of things, including discrimination based on her anti-gay marriage stance and violation of her privacy when a representative acknowledged publicly that she had breast implants. The franchise wasted no time with a countersuit and, according to CNN, one of the claims seeks to recover some $5000 the pageant organizers loaned Prejean for the breast implant surgery – pursuant to an oral agreement between the parties.

Some stories, even contracts profs can’t make up. This ugly tale of caution is one of them.

Update (12 November 2009): the case has settled, but controversy continues to follow her.…

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Subrogation and unjust enrichment – hunting the snark

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| High Court of Australia, Restitution, Subrogation

The Hunting of the SnarkThe Hunting of the Snark is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll subtitled An Agony in 8 Fits. In Fit 6, the Barrister dreams that the eponymous Snark serves as counsel for the defence, finds the verdict as the jury, and passes sentence as the judge. Perhaps it is fitting then to observe that, by way of update to yesterday’s post about Bofinger v Kingsway Group Limited (2009) 239 CLR 269, [2009] HCA 44 (13 October 2009), Legal Eagle on SkepticLawyer characterises the judgment as “yet another snark at unjust enrichment”. True, but reaffirming a light approach to the “unifying legal concept” of unjust enrichment is not necessarily a bad thing, even if the tone is indeed unnecessarily snarky. She does concede that, “to give the High Court credit where credit is due, it gives reasoned arguments for rejecting the Banque Financière decision (see Banque Financière de la Cité v Parc (Battersea) Ltd [1999] 1 AC 221; [1998] UKHL 7 (26 February 1998)). It would sound quite reasonable if it weren’t for the usual snark beforehand” (given my views in my earlier post, it’s no surprise that I agree with her here). Her snark is that the Court does not provide similarly reasoned arguments for what she sees as negative knee-jerk responses to unjust enrichment reasoning.…

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