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45 Emory L. J. 153 (1996)
Replacing the Unitary Principle of Unjust Enrichment

handle is hein.journals/emlj45 and id is 163 raw text is: REPLACING THE UNITARY PRINCIPLE OF UNJUST ENRICHMENT Christopher T. Wonnell* The law imposes civil liability when it finds that a person wrongfully impaired the interests of another in the pursuit of his or her own pur- poses. For that reason, civil wrongs generally involve some benefit to the defendant, in the purposes that motivated the act, as well as some detri- ment to the plaintiff. The benefit is obvious in the case of torts such as conversion. It exists also when a person drives at an unsafe speed in order to arrive at a destination sooner, or even when the driver allows her thoughts to wander rather than fastidiously adverting to pedestrians on the roadway.' In general, the civil law organizes and conceptualizes wrongs in terms of the harms they cause for the plaintiff rather than the benefits they generate for the defendant.2 The law sees a tort such as negligent driving as the wrongful imposition of a harm and seeks to remedy that wrong by requiring compensation for the plaintiffs injuries rather than by requir- ing the defendant to give up the benefits of her own misdeed.3 A contract breach is also considered an unjustified violation of another's interests and is usually redressed by compensating the plaintiff for the harm to those interests rather than by requiring the defendant to disgorge gains received by her breach of contract.4 * Professor of Law, University of San Diego. The author thanks the following individuals for their helpful comments: Larry Alexander, Gail Heriot, Mike Kelly, Andrew Kull, Mike Rappaport, Maimon Shwarzschild, Emily Sherwin, and Tom Smith. 1 See Jules Coleman, Corrective Justice and Wrongful Gain, 11 J. LEGAL STUD. 421, 424-25 (1982) (comparing source of wrongful gain for negligent parties and perpetrators of intentional frauds). 2 See Nicholas J. McBride & Paul McGrath, The Nature of Restitution, 15 OXFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 33, 44-45 (1995) (stating that the principal focus of civil law is upon compensation for losses). a See Randall v. Shelton, 293 S.W.2d 559 (Ky. 1956) (granting no restitutionary recovery when nonnegligent truck driver caused stones to be thrown onto plaintiff's property); Daniel Friedmann, Restitution of Benefits Obtained Through the Appropriation of Property or the Commission of a Wrong, 80 COLUM. L. REv. 504, 531 (1980) (finding no basis for restitutionary claim where defend- ant's behavior merely increases the risk of accidental damage to property). ' See E. Allan Farnsworth, Your Loss or My Gain? The Dilemma of the Disgorgement Principle in Breach of Contract, 94 YALE L.J. 1339, 1369 (1985) (In no jurisdiction do courts generally apply the disgorgement principle [for breach of contract].).