It's not my bailiwick so I'm
probably wrong, but how about s 74A of the Property Law Act 2007 (inserted by s
6 of the Property Law Amendment Act 2016):
74A - Recovery of payments
made under mistake of law
(1) If relief in respect of
any payment that has been made under mistake is sought in any court (whether in
civil proceedings or by way of defence, set-off, counterclaim, or otherwise)
and that relief could be granted if the mistake were wholly one of fact, that
relief must not be denied by reason only that the mistake is one of law,
whether or not it is in any degree also one of fact.
(2) Nothing in this section
enables relief to be given in respect of any payment made at a time when the
law required, or allowed, or was commonly understood to require or allow,
the payment to be made or enforced, by reason only that the law was
subsequently changed or shown not to have been as it was commonly understood to
have been at the time of the payment.
Steve Hedley
s.hedley@ucc.ie
private-law-theory.org
A question mostly for the New
Zealanders. Section 94A of the old Judicature Act 1908 (NZ) provided for a
settled understanding of the law defence in cases of mistaken payments. I know
that the entire Act was repealed as part of an overhaul of the judicial system in
the Senior Courts Act 2016, but the NZ Law Commission recommended that sections
94A-B be retained and put in a new commercial law statute. I can't find any
trace of it though in the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017. Did the
provisions just get repealed and never re-enacted? And if so, was that by
accident or design?
Duncan
Professor Duncan Sheehan
Director of Centre for
Business Law & Practice
School of Law
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT