A Study On Unjust Enrichment In The Regulations

Unjust enrichment,“because there is no legal reason and get profit from the factthat making other people suffer”, becomes another cause of debt. Unjust enrichmentsystem originated from the right of claim of the Rome law, which is created on theprinciple of fairness. It is generated for adjusting the “illegitimate benefits”, andformed the general provisions in the long-time evolution. With the development ofeconomic society, no matter in Anglo-American law system countries or thecontinental law system countries, every countries’ civil law has increasingly paidattention to unjust enrichment, they not only formed the unjust enrichment system,but also opened up the type research of unjust enrichment because there is no legalreason for unjust enrichment. This played an important role in adjusting socialrelations. But the civil law of our country only provides two laws for unjustenrichment, that is the Article92of General Principles of Civil Law of P. R. China（hereinafter referred to General Principles of Civil Law）:“If there is no legal basis,people who obtained improper benefits and caused any loss of others should returnthe improper benefit to the person who suffered the loss.” And the Article131of theOpinions of the Supreme People’s Court about many problems in implementing‘General Principles of Civil Law of P. R. China’（hereinafter referred to the Opinionsof Civil Law）:“Returned improper benefit should include the original and the fruitsof the original. The other profit getting from unjust enrichment should be confiscatedafter deducting labor management fees.” These two laws constitute all provisions ofour country civil law on unjust enrichment, they stipulate the constitutiverequirements and the return range of unjust enrichment respectively. But there is nolegal provision on how to use the distribution of burden of proof, the claim forrestitution of unjust enrichment and the concurrence of other claim when dealing withthe dispute case of unjust enrichment in justice practice, and no legal provision onwhether the parties can apply to the judging rules of unjust enrichment directly afterthe parties choose other claim and other problems, even for the constitution of unjust enrichment also has different interpretation. This leads to a problem that is thereduction of operability of justice practice, the judges don’t want to use the provisionof unjust enrichment to deal with cases, in fact, the contents of unjust enrichment arerarely when the people’s court accepts cases, which not only increase the litigationexhaustion of the party, but also waste the limited judicial resources.This requires us to strengthen the theoretical study of unjust enrichment, andmake legislative norms or publish more detailed judicial interpretation to guidepractice. This thesis is divided into3parts. Part1uses the comparative method tostudy the existing unjust enrichment rules, reflects the lag in legislation of the currentunjust enrichment rules of our country, and shows the necessity and significance ofenhancing the legislation of unjust enrichment rules through comparing the unjustenrichment rules of Anglo-American law system countries or the continental lawsystem countries and regions. Part2illustrates some real cases in justice practice,elaborates and comments some problems of unjust enrichment rules in judicialoperation through the method of case study. Part3provides the suggestion ofperfecting legislation through analyzing the consisted elements and burden of proofof unjust enrichment, so as to reach the aim to effectively guide the judicial practice,actively resolve the disputes of the parties concerned, improve the efficiency of theproceedings, achieve fairness and justice.