Legal-Ease: ‘Unjust enrichment’ recovers benefits provided to others

Lee R. Schroeder is an Ohio licensed attorney with Schroeder Law LLC in Ottawa. He limits his practice to business, real estate, estate planning and agriculture issues in northwest Ohio. He can be reached at lee@leeschroeder.com or at (419) 523-5523. This article is not intended to serve as legal advice, and specific advice should be sought from the licensed attorney of your choice based upon the specific facts and circumstances that you face.

Unjust enrichment is a legal method that may be used to force someone to pay for a benefit they have received from another person or business. Three things must be present for unjust enrichment to occur: the person must have actually benefitted from the goods, the person must know they have benefitted and the item they’ve received must be something that is unfair for them to keep.

Sometimes, people do good deeds for others when society’s concept of fairness hints (the legal term for hinting is “implying”) that the doer of the good deed should be paid.

Similarly, if a business does not have a contract (either in writing or verbally) but provides goods or services, in many cases, the business still has a right to be paid for goods or services provided. In these certain situations, a legal remedy called “unjust enrichment” may be invoked to force the benefitted person pay for the benefit that he or she received.

Read Lee’s full article on unjust enrichment in the Lima News here: Legal-Ease: ‘Unjust enrichment’ recovers benefits provided to others

Source:LimaOhio.com, Legal-Ease: ‘Unjust enrichment’ recovers benefits provided to others, by Lee R. Schroeder, October 18, 2014

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