Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Things I just learned I didn't know

Unjust enrichment. It’s a legal term -- civil law, not criminal law. Sadly, unjust enrichment does not apply to the fortunes made via oil speculation or subprime mortgages or no-bid defense contracts or for-profit healthcare; but you can see how, adopted as a moral or economic concept, unjust enrichment is stunning in both its breadth and its simplicity.

Here are the key elements of unjust enrichment.
__ An enrichment
__ An impoverishment
__ A connection between the enrichment and the impoverishment
__ Absence of a justification for the enrichment and the impoverishment
__ An absence of a remedy provided by the law
It’s so perfectly tidy, isn’t it.

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