Portman Building Soc. v. Hamlyn Taylor Neck

The principle of unjust enrichment has to an extent filled a gap in the intellectual ecology of the civil law. This principle, which requires those who have received money or property to restore the value of those assets to the plaintiff when the circumstances are such that the defendant’s receipt or retention of that wealth is unjust, explains and gives vitality to doctrines such as money had and received and quantum meruit, which hitherto common lawyers had consigned to the seldom-read depths of contract law texts. However, the principle of unjust enrichment has perhaps been too successful for its own good. The concept of unjustness, despite attempts to limit its scope, has a normative force that has few natural boundaries. The attempt in Portman Building Soc. v. Hamlyn Taylor Neck (a