L'Enriquiment injustificat. Proposta de regulació per al futur llibre sisè del codi civil de Catalunya

Abstract

As the reversal of unjustified enrichment is a general principle underlying all areas of Catalan Private Law, the proposed regulation for the future Book VI (Obligations and Contracts) of the Catalan Civil Code which is attached to (and also explained in) this paper purports to be a broad formulation both of the facts and of the legal consequences of unjustified enrichment. The factual element of the proposed rules is an enrichment (either an increase in assets, a decrease in liabilities or a saving) of a certain person which is attributtable to another's disadvantage, without any juridical reason entitling the benefited person to the enrichment. The absence of entitlement to the enrichment lies in the personal relationship between the enriched and the disadvantaged person, including the non-achievement of the purpose or expectation for which the disadvantaged person conferred the enrichment. The substantial legal consequence of unjustified enrichment is the obligation (and the corresponding claim of the disadvantaged person) to reverse the enrichment by means of transferring the asset conferred or, in the case of non-transferable enrichment (either when the conferred asset no longer belongs to the enriched person or when the enrichment consisted of receiving work done or of the use of another's assets), by paying its monetary value to the disadvantaged person. Since the rules on unjustified enrichment merely attempt to restore the balance between two econom- ic interests without intending to punish any personal conduct, the economic value to be reversed (either transferred or paid) is that of the increase experienced by the enriched person, thus disregarding the damage or economic decrease of the disadvantaged person. For this same reason and in accordance with Catalan and Spanish case law, the proposed regulation allows a possible joinder of causes of action between the claim for reversal of enrichment and a claim for reparation of the disadvantage based on the fault of the enriched person. However, no concurrence between general and specific rules should be allowed: when a rule within a spe- cific area of private law, such as family or inheritance law, grants a disadvantaged person a right to reversal of an enrichment, these general rules on unjustified enrichment proposed for the future Book VI of the Catalan Civil Code should not be applied.