Samsoondar v Capital Insurance and Surrey Co Co v NHS Lincolnshire CCG – Part 5 – Causes of Action: Compulsion, Mistake, and Voluntariness
This is the fifth post (in a series of seven; see also parts I, II, III, IV, VI and VII) discussing Samsoondar v Capital Insurance Company Ltd (Trinidad and Tobago) [2020] UKPC 33 (14 December 2020) (Samsoondar) and Surrey County Council v NHS Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group [2020] EWHC 3550 (QB) (21 December 2020) (Surrey). In my first post, I introduced the cases and issues. A claim to restitution for unjust enrichment failed in the first but succeeded in the second. In my second post, I examined whether the defendants were enriched at the expense of the plaintiffs. In my third post, I considered whether compulsory discharge of the debt of another could have provided a cause of action in Samsoondar and Surrey, and whether Surrey could rely upon a policy-motivated cause of action, consisting in the unlawful obtaining or conferral of a benefit by a public authority. In my previous post, I considered whether the mistaken discharge of the debt of another might have been available on the facts of both cases. In this post, I want to consider the effect of voluntariness in the discharge cases.…