7/5/20
SCHOOL FACILITY MANAGEMENT LTD v GOVERNING BODY OF CHRIST THE KING COLLEGE [2020] EWHC 1118 (Comm)
A hire agreement entered into by a council for the construction and hire of a modular building and equipment was properly characterised as a finance lease rather than an operating lease [250]. As a result it involved borrowing for which permission of the Secretary of State had not been obtained, so the transaction was ultra vires and void. Considers claims of unjust enrichment, including valuation of benefits conferred under the contract [425], recovery of money paid, and the defence of change of position [466].
28/3/14
HARRISON v MADEJSKI [2014] EWCA Civ 361
A judge had been entitled to find that the sale of a car at auction had excluded its personalised registration mark, and that the buyer had been unjustly enriched by acquiring the mark. The enrichment was rightly measured as the mark's market value, not the lower value the buyer assigned to it at the auction. Subjective value could be defeated by a claimant proving that the defendant had received an incontrovertible benefit, or that the defendant had requested or freely accepted the benefit (Benedetti v Sawiris, 2013). The judge had been entitled to make a Bullock order for payment by the purchaser of the claimant’s unsuccessful costs of a claim against the auctioneers as second defendants.
17/7/13
BENEDETTI v SAWIRIS [2013] UKSC 50
The claimant provided brokerage services which assisted the defendant to acquire a company. The original contract between the parties had been abandoned so could not be relevant to assessment of the value of the claimant’s services and the claim was a restitutionary claim for the defendant’s unjust enrichment. The market value of the services was €36.3m. That was the starting point for quantifying the claim. It was then for the defendant to prove that he in fact received less or no benefit (subjective devaluation). The trial judge had erred in allowing more than market value on the basis of evidence of an offer made by the defendant showing that the defendant regarded the services as worth €75m (subjective revaluation, which is not an appropriate measure). As the claimant had already in fact received a brokerage fee of €67m for the services performed, the claim to any further payment failed.
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