Opinion ID: 1530016
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application of the case law to the record.

Text: As we have noted at the outset, the issue before us is not free of difficulty. One might reasonably disagree with the result reached by the court in Baer v. Chase ; counsel for the plaintiff in that case might plausibly have questioned whether he could have filed a meritorious action before The Sopranos reached the television screen, when, according to Baer's own testimony, he did not expect remuneration from Chase in the event that Baer's suggestions for the series came to naught. Nevertheless, the court's general analysis in Baer of the unjust enrichment doctrine is consistent with our precedents, and its approach to the statute of limitations issue is founded upon case law elsewhere and apparently represents the generally accepted approach. On the strength of the decision in Baer and in the other authorities cited, we conclude that in the present case, the statute of limitations began to run no later than April 4, 1995. By that date, Ms. Thompsen had performed her last service to the Times, the Times had declined to compensate her, and, according to Ms. Thompsen, the Times had begun to process the information and ideas that she had provided and had put them to use for the newspaper's own benefit. Indeed, by April 4, 1995, Ms. Thompsen had a stronger case than the plaintiff had in Baer v. Chase , for by that date she had been definitively told that she would not be paid; Baer had never encountered a comparable final refusal. [7] The first motions judge ruled that Defendant would not have been unjustly enriched if it had never used Plaintiff's ideas, but even assuming, arguendo, that the predicate for the judge's statement was sound, [8] it is not obvious to us that this ruling was correct. If one credits the allegations of the complaint, then by April 4, 1995, Ms. Thompsen had conferred a benefit on the Times, with the encouragement of the newspaper's personnel, by providing the Times with an idea for a family magazine, two proposed layouts, and a marketing strategy. The Times had thus received something of value which it had not possessed before Ms. Thompsen provided it. In any unjust enrichment case, the plaintiff must, of course, prove that the defendant's enrichment is unjust. See, e.g., Vereen, 623 A.2d at 1194. [A] claim for unjust enrichment accrues only when the enrichment actually becomes unlawful, [9] T.E.A.M. Entm't, Inc. v. Douglas, 361 F.Supp.2d 362, 369 (S.D.N.Y.2005), i.e., where there has been a wrongful act giving rise to a duty of restitution. Congregation Yetev, 596 N.Y.S.2d at 437. The difficult question is whether, on April 4, 1995, the Times' representation to Ms. Thompsen that she would not be compensated for her efforts, when the newspaper had the benefit of her ideas and proposals, could fairly be characterized as unjust. Although her complaint did not explicitly address the point, it may well be that if Ms. Thompsen gave the matter any specific consideration, she may have anticipated payment from the Times only if and when her idea for a family supplement was in fact implemented by the newspaper. The plaintiff in Baer had precisely such an expectation, and common sense suggests that his understanding would hardly be unusual. If, for example, Ms. Thompsen had simply mailed her plan and suggestions to the Times without any invitation or encouragement from the newspaper, the Times obviously would not be unjustly enriched if it refused to pay for the unsolicited material. The doctrine of unjust enrichment does not give leave to every self-styled inventor or idea person to send his or her proposals to newspapers or other organizations and then claim unjust enrichment if the purported beneficiary of his or her inventiveness declines to pay. [10] In the present case, however, by the time that the newspaper declined to compensate her, the plaintiff had done a significant amount of work on behalf of, and induced by, the Times; the parties had dealings over a five-month period. Under like circumstances, the court held in Baer that the plaintiff's cause of action accrued upon the furnishing of his last service to Chase, notwithstanding Baer's admitted lack of any expectation that he would be paid if The Sopranos never made it to the television screen. Moreover, in the present case, Ms. Thompsen claimed that by Mr. Mahr's own admission, Ms. Thompsen's ideas and proposal were already in the works; in this respect, the reasoning in Baer applies a fortiori. [11] We therefore conclude that Ms. Thompsen's claim for unjust enrichment is time-barred.