Talk:Quantum meruit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Law Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.
???	This article has not yet received a quality rating on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance assessment on the assessment scale.

The first example suggests that any action that creates a positive externality should be compensable via the theory of quantum meruit. That doesn't really make sense to me. To take an example from Externality, if I plant a nice garden in front of my house, the neighbors shouldn't have to pay me for the benefit of being able to look at it, should they? 69.231.217.213 04:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Nope, but maybe not for the reason you think. I'm not sure planting a nice garden confers a benefit in law on your neighbours. The area of quantum meruit and unjust enrichment seems to be fairly new (at least in law terms), though it's fairly well developed in Australia. There seem to have been two schools of thought as to how the right arises. One is that the quantum meruit is actually an implied contract, either implied by the facts or implied by law. The other was that quantum meruit was a remedy outside of contract, purely in the realm of unjust enrichment, which arises where a contract does not exist or is defective. The second was accepted in Pavey & Matthews v Paul. One element of unjust enrichment is the acceptance of the benefit, and that the enrichment thereby is unjust. I think the bar is a bit higher than simply creating a positive externality in an economic sense. --202.73.206.161 04:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this even differs from an externality. The example given above, where someone plants a garden and the neighbor gets the benefit of looking at it, is distinctly different from the wall example. What if, as a result of the wall being built, the neighbor's property value increases? Without quantum meruit, he's become a free rider, getting something for nothing. If I plant a flower garden, you're not going to gain a financial benefit from it. Unjust enrichment applies when someone gets a financial benefit that they did not rightly deserve, not just when they get to look at something pretty. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.130.2.165 (talk) 07:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Create a page Legal Latin and put all these phrases that are lame on their own in one place, with redirects. That's what I say... Wetman 01:26, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree--Example I is a bit broad and doesn't quite capture the concept. I don't think many courts would grant recovery to the man who built the fence, without more of an implied obligation. The example presupposes that the neighbor would consider the fence a benefit but this may not be true.