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NLJ this week: Unjust enrichment & the problem with oral agreements

24 March 2023
Issue: 8018 / Categories: Legal News , Commercial , Property
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The Supreme Court decision in Barton v Morris is a landmark case on the interaction between the law of unjust enrichment and the law of contract. 

In this week’s NLJ, Sarah Allan, partner, and Chris Ward, knowledge lawyer, at Pennington Manches Cooper, write that the story behind the case ‘is a paradigm of how things ought not to be done’.

The dispute centred on an oral agreement for one party to act as broker in a commercial property sale. Allan and Ward write: ‘There being no written contract, Judge Pearce had to rely on witness evidence to determine what the parties had agreed some five years prior to the High Court hearing in June 2018.’

The authors look at the case and its implications in detail here.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

Blake Morgan managing partner appointed chair of CBI South-East Council

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Commercial dispute resolution team welcomes partner in Cambridge

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Firm strengthens international funds capability with senior hire

NEWS
The proposed £11bn redress scheme following the Supreme Court’s motor finance rulings is analysed in this week’s NLJ by Fred Philpott of Gough Square Chambers
In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
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