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Over a period of time, issues of unjust enrichment have been a part of the law of restitution. This incorporates all the remedies depriving the defendant of a profit instead of granting reimbursement for the loss that the claimant has suffered. The law of restitution liberated itself only after the revolutionary judgement of the House of Lords in Lipkin Gorman v karpanle Ltd. and Woolwich Equitable Building Society v IRC. “The defence of change of position will be available to a defendant who has received property and on the faith of the receipt of that property, suffered some change in the personal circumstance”. A person, who has changed positions in ‘bad faith’, is not accessible to defence.

Defence is accessible to someone whose position has changed in such a way that it would be prejudiced in all available circumstances for him to make restitution or also make restitution in full. Also, if a defendant has consumed all the money, this will not establish change of position. Some may be unaware, but law has accredited change of position for over 50 years but only in the framework of frustrated contracts. The House of Lords annulled the judgement of Baylis v Bishop of London in which a bishop was unsuccessful to raise a defence of change of position.

Defence of change is position is based on the idea of ‘balance of justice’ between the parties. It is also known that change of position is centred on the idea of ‘principle’ and not on ‘discretion’.
The defendant’s position must have changed detrimentally.

When a defendant has control over a particular asset, the courts are usually hesitant to let the change of position defence, till the time the owner is still deepened by possession of that particular asset. Lord Temple...

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...ve no clear definition of the ‘wrongdoer’. We do not know if this word has something to do with illegality, or if someone has behaved in a morally offensive way. In the case of, Equiticop Industries Group v. R. , Smellie J held that the New Zealand government could not raise defence in certain matters of payments, which were made to purchase a share and buy-back schemes which infringed the New Zealand Companies Act 1955, s 62, which clearly forbids the buying of your company shares.

In the case Philip Collins Ltd v Davis Jonathan Parker J identified that the burden of evidence was on the defendant to establish the change of position, but he also realised that the court should not implement a very strict standard of proof.
Recent arguments about the type of the law of restitution have usually focussed on the theoretical issue and very less on the practical side.

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