Defrauded Mortgagee cannot take surplus on sale
A Building Society cannot keep any excess proceeds of sale of a house mortgaged to it by fraud. Policy was against unjust enrichment and will not allow a lender to take a profit from a fraudulent borrower.
Peter Gibson LJ said: ‘I remain wholly unpersuaded that in the circumstances of the present case the law should accord a restitutionary remedy to a secured creditor who has elected not to avoid the mortgage but to affirm it and has received full satisfaction thereunder. To my mind there is an inconsistency between a person being such a creditor and yet claiming more than that to which he is contractually entitled and which he has already fully recovered. Once the creditor has so elected and recovered in full, I do not see why the law should come to his aid to allow him to make a further claim. In re Simms; Ex parte Trustee [1934] Ch. 1 this court refused to allow a trustee in bankruptcy, who had elected to treat a receiver as a tortfeasor for converting to his own use the chattels of a bankrupt, to recover the profits made by the receiver as money had and received. The authority of that case is weakened by the reliance by this court on the now exploded implied promise theory, but I note that it is still cited in textbooks: see, for example, Chitty on Contracts, 27th ed. (1994), vol. 1, p. 1437, para. 29-052) and it serves to illustrate that not every action for an account of profits from a wrongdoer, even where there has been use of the plaintiff’s property, will be allowed, and that it may be barred when there has been an election for another remedy.
Further I am not satisfied that in the circumstances of the present case it would be right to treat the unjust enrichment of Mr. Thomas as having been gained ‘at the expense of’ the society, even allowing for the possibility of an extended meaning for those words to apply to cases of non-subtractive restitution for a wrong. There is no decided authority that comes anywhere near to covering the present circumstances. I do not overlook the fact that the policy of law is to view with disfavour a wrongdoer benefiting from his wrong, the more so when the wrong amounts to fraud, but it cannot be suggested that there is a universally applicable principle that in every case there will be restitution of benefit from a wrong. As Professor Birks says (An Introduction to the Law of Restitution, p. 24): ‘there are some circumstances in which enrichment by wrongdoing has to be given up. That is, the wrong itself is not always in itself a sufficient factor to call for restitution.’ On the facts of the present case, in my judgment, the fraud is not in itself a sufficient factor to allow the society to require Mr. Thomas to account to it.’
Glidewell LJ said: ‘The proposition that a wrongdoer should not be allowed to profit from his wrongs has an obvious attraction. The further proposition, that the victim or intended victim of the wrongdoing, who has in the event suffered no loss, is entitled to retain or recover the amount of the profit is less obviously persuasive.’ and
‘In order to succeed in this appeal, Mr. Waters is required to establish that the second proposition is correct, and that English law provides a mechanism by which it can be given effect. Despite his able argument, I cannot discern that there is any such general established principle. Indeed, Mr. Waters has to concede that there is no English authority upon which he can rely to establish his right to succeed either in the law of restitution, under the head of unjust enrichment, or in the law of constructive trusts. The sole American decision which appears to be directly in point, that of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Federal Sugar Refining Co. v. United States Sugar Equalization Board (1920) 268 F. 575, is not sufficiently persuasive to secure a visa for admission into English jurisprudence. Like Judge Maddocks, in the passage from his judgment quoted by Peter Gibson L.J., I cannot conclude that the principle for which Mr. Waters contends is at present established as part of our law.’
Glidewell LJ, Glidewell LJ
Independent 04-Aug-1995, Times 04-Jul-1995, [1996] Ch 217, [1995] EWCA Civ 21, [1995] 4 All ER 673, [1996] 2 WLR 63
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
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Restitutionary Claim against Pofits from Breach
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Equity, Damages
Leading Case
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.81150