The South African Law of Unjustified Enrichment

The South African Law of Unjustified Enrichment sets out the principles governing the general requirements of enrichment liability as well as the traditional specific enrichment actions. These actions cover a broad range of situations where someone enriched another by conferring a benefit for a purpose that failed, or by improving another’s property or paying another’s debts without authorisation, or where someone was enriched by infringing another’s rights. Since the first edition of this work there has been greater judicial recognition of the general principles of enrichment liability and a decreasing interest in the identification of specific enrichment actions. These developments have increased the risk of the general requirements for enrichment liability being treated as free-floating concepts that may be resorted to whenever it is felt that duties of restitution must be imposed. The second edition seeks to address this challenge, and also engages with developments in the law relating to the unwinding of contracts, undoing the consequences of fraud and theft, and locating enrichment liability in its broader constitutional and statutory context. Over 400 new judgments, as well as major developments in foreign law are considered. The South African Law of Unjustified Enrichment is aimed at a broad audience, which includes legal practitioners and the judiciary, the local and international legal academic community, and anyone requiring an advanced introduction into the fundamental principles of the field. Jacques du Plessis is a Distinguished Professor of Private Law at the University of Stellenbosch.