Category: Mistake

Some practical perspective on the recovery of misdirected payments

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| Mistake, Mistaken payments, Restitution

Chips, via WikipediaI’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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Samsoondar v Capital Insurance and Surrey Co Co v NHS Lincolnshire CCG – Part 5 – Causes of Action: Compulsion, Mistake, and Voluntariness

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| Mistake, Restitution, Restitution

Surrey v NHS Lincs CCGThis 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.…

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The Court of Appeal on Barder v Calouori [1988] AC 20 and common mistake of fact

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| General, Mistake, Restitution

Richardson v Richardson [2011] EWCA Civ 79 (08 February 2011)

Lord Justice Munby

The death of the wife

17. There is no need to spend much time on the law. The principles are set out in the passage in the speech of Lord Brandon of Oakbrook in the eponymous case, Barder v Calouori [1988] AC 20, page 43, which is so well-known that it hardly requires quotation.

18. It is well recognised that the unexpected death of one of the spouses can be a Barder event. Barder itself was such a case (wife killed children and committed suicide five weeks after the ancillary relief order). There have been others in which the claim has succeeded: Smith v Smith (Smith and Others Intervening) [1992] Fam 69 (wife committed suicide within six months); Barber v Barber [1993] 1 FLR 476 (wife died of liver disease within three months); Reid v Reid [2003] EWHC 2878 (Fam), [2004] 1 FLR 736 (diabetic wife with high blood pressure died within two months). But it is not enough to show that one of the parties died unexpectedly very shortly after the hearing. What has to be shown, to quote Lord Brandon, is that the death “invalidate[s] the basis, or fundamental assumption, upon which the order was made”.

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