Restitution Discussion Group Archives
| Sender: |
Steve Hedley |
| Date: |
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:50:08 +0100 |
| Re: |
Bank overcharging customers |
At 15:12 05/08/98
+0100, Eoin O' Dell wrote:
Last March, RTE (the national tv and radio station)
were about to break the story that various branches of the National Irish
Bank had imposed excess charges and fees on customer bank accounts. NIB
sued RTE for breach of confidence, taking the case all the way to the
Supreme Court (see NIB v RTE (Supreme Court, unreported, 20 March 1998))
which ruled that the proposed disclosure was in the public interest. RTE
then broadcast a series of allegations that NIB The bank commissioned
a consultancy, Arthur Andersen, to undertake an investigation of the matter.
At a press conference yesterday, the bank published that report, and its
chief executive, Mr Mr Grahame Savage, undertook to return the excess
charges and fees, plus interest. (snip)
My question is this; given that the bank took
RTE to the Supreme Court in an effort to prevent the broadcast of the
story, they might equally have decided not to return the money at all,
or to return it without interest; if they had done so, and a customer
of the bank had decided to sue for the return of the money plus interest,
would that have been an action for restitution of an unjust enrichment,
and if so, what would the ground for restitution (the unjust factor) have
been ? Presumably the bank's treatment of its customers was
a breach of its contracts with them.
Actions to recover the customers' lost money are therefore
actions for breach of contract, or perhaps even (depending on the circumstances)
actions for debts based on the contracts, if that is different.
No doubt failing to pay your debts enriches you, but
to define 'unjust enrichment' so broadly means that *all* civil liabilities
would be based on unjust enrichment.
Steve Hedley
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