Opinion ID: 1142705
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: herein of the difference between mere enrichments and unjust enrichments

Text: The Piecara loans originated entirely post-July 2, 1984. The LK & R and Bigelow credits had a BOM history, and USB seizes on this to sue BOM, sensing perhaps that Gray may not respond. USB succeeded below, as the Chancery Court held BOM liable jointly and severally with James Gray for losses emanating from the LK & R and Bigelow matters. The Court's supporting legal theory was unjust enrichment or quasi-contract. The Court found: As a proximate result of Gray's transactions with Lowery, Riggan and Kantor and the Walter Heller/Bigelow letter of credit, ... [BOM] was unjustly enriched. BOM vigorously dissents. Assuming arguendo Gray's actions were improper, BOM denies it was in any way responsible for those actions, and the mere fact just debts owed it may have been paid, without more, does not make its enrichment unjust. USB retorts BOM was indeed unjustly enriched and that the judgment below may stand (1) if BOM gave no value for benefits USB/Gray conferred upon it, or (2) if BOM knew or should have known that Gray was breaching his fiduciary duty to USB. Unjust enrichment is the sovereign's acceptance of first principles of external morality into its corporate law. It is a legal principle that makes sense only in a state respecting private property and a capitalistic economy. It is a creature of equity closely associated with implied contracts, quasi-contracts and trusts. Estate of Johnson v. Adkins, 513 So.2d 922 (Miss. 1987). It imports a standard easy to state but difficult to apply, no doubt because of its generality near to abstraction. In Hans v. Hans, 482 So.2d 1117 (Miss. 1986), for example, we said: The doctrine of unjust enrichment or recovery in quasi-contract applies to situations where there is no legal contract but where the person sought to be charged is in possession of money or property which in good conscience and justice he should not retain but should deliver to another, the courts imposing a duty to refund the money or the use value of the property to the person to whom in good conscience it sought to belong. Hans, 482 So.2d at 1122. To like effect are statements in Koval v. Koval, 576 So.2d 134, 136-137 (Miss. 1991); Magnolia Federal Savings & Loan v. Randal Craft Realty Co., 342 So.2d 1308 (Miss. 1977); and Old Men's Home, Inc. v. Lee's Estate, 191 Miss. 669, 2 So.2d 791 (1941), among others. A person is enriched when he receives an economic benefit. This includes positive profits, a loss avoided, as well as discharge of debts. What is important and what careless readers often fail to remember is our law accepts no value condemning pursuit of wealth, so long as it be done within legal parameters. There is nothing inherently unjust about enrichment. The principle does not proscribe mere enrichments, only those objectively seen as unjust. For example, a lender may hold a debtor's legally enforceable note, having given value for the promise to pay. But where one's debtor or someone acting in his interest procures payment of the just debt, the creditor may accept and ordinarily keep that payment without giving further value, for we see no injustice in his doing so. The Restatement of Restitution, which has been cited with approval by this Court, [11] provides, if payment is made, even by mistake, to a creditor of a third person to satisfy a just debt of that third person, the payor has no right of restitution of or from the third party. Restatement of Restitution § 14(1) (1936). Accord, United States v. Bedford Associates, 713 F.2d 895, 905 (2nd Cir.1983), Equilease Corp. v. Hentz, 634 F.2d 850, 853 (5th Cir.1981), and Strubbe v. Sonnenschein, 299 F.2d 185, 191-92 (2nd Cir.1962). To be sure, this is not so if the third person has procured the mistake or participated in or caused a breach of some duty imposed in law, but where nothing like this has happened, the enrichment is not unjust and the payor must instead look to the party whose debt has been paid, through subrogation or some such theory. The principle may be stated otherwise. The mere fact that a third person  here BOM  benefits from an arrangement between two other persons  USB and LK & R and USB and Bigelow  does not make such third person liable in quasi contract, unjust enrichment, or restitution. Moreover, where a third person benefits from an agreement  here a loan agreement  entered into between two other persons, in the absence of some misleading or wrongful act by the third person, the mere failure of performance by one of the contracting parties (LK & R and Bigelow) does not give rise to a right of restitution against the third person (BOM). In other words, a person who has conferred a benefit on another, by making a contract with a third person, is not entitled to restitution from the other merely because of the failure of performance by the third person. Restatement of Restitution § 14(1) (1936); 66 Am.Jur.2d Restitution and Implied Contracts, § 16, at 960 (1973).