Unjust Enrichment Principle
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A principle of law holding that a person enriched without a lawful basis at another's expense must return the benefit. Its core proposition is that fair allocation requires every gain to have a recognized legal ground, so a benefit built on another party's loss without such a ground is unjust and is corrected by restitution. The qualifier is that the claim operates as a fallback where neither contract nor tort applies.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Gain check: identify who received the benefit before asking whether they earned it. - Loss check: identify the party who correspondingly lost something and by how much. - Basis check: ask whether a contract, statute, or other recognized ground justifies the gain.
Anchor fast decisions
Allocation rules normally work through agreements or through compensation for wrongs, which leaves a gap when a benefit shifts hands with neither. Restitution closes that gap by looking only at the structure of the outcome, asking whether one party gained at another's expense without justification, which restores the distribution without needing to establish fault.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
account_treeGenealogyexpand_more
menu_bookReferencesexpand_more
Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restitution_and_unjust_enrichmentverified
PRIVATE NOTES · Only visible to you
SAVED Q&A
ENTRY Q&A · Private saving available
Ask with a clear boundary
thinkingmodels answers from published entry context only.
Your question is sent to thinkingmodels. The answer uses public entry context only.