Unjust Enrichment

[green12]

A bookkeeper at my Company made an error when making an online payment and accidentally transferred 1500GBP to the wrong bank account. One digit was wrong.

We contacted our bank who basically told us there is nothing they can do except speak to the other bank and ask them to ask their customer to refund the money. Our bank did this and the customer refused to refund it. I am told that this is an offence under the law of 'unjust enrichment'.

Obviously the bank will not release the name of their client to us so I am wondering how we can proceed.

I spoke informally to solicitor and it sounds like most of the money would be eaten up by legal costs if I used one, so I would like to try and do it myself.

I basically want to know what court form I need to complete in order to ask the court to get the bank to release the name of their client so we can then sue them.

[SofiaAmes]

No advice, but I had 100,000 gbp transferred into my account by accident by my solicitor's secretary while he was on vacation. We had just sold our house and she transferred the money from their client account twice by accident. Her bank basically told her the same thing that you are being told. They insisted it was up to me the receiver to return the money. I had a bit of fun with jokes about retiring in Rio at her expense and then I had to go down to our branch and fill out forms to transfer the money back to the solicitor. I thought it was very odd that my bank couldn't just take the money out of my account and return it as it was clearly a mistake and I was acknowledging that it was.
By the way, surely you have business insurance that would cover something like this (and any legal fees involved in recovering the money).

[green12]

blimey - 100,000 ! I suppose I could go down the insurance route but it seems like such a palaver when it is something that should be so straightforward. I find it so bizarre that this sort of thing must happen all the time and yet there is not a lot of info. about how to approach recovering it unless you use a solicitor.

[MrAnchovy]

I am going to say some things that you might not find very helpful.

You should have procedures in place that mean that this cannot happen due to a single mistake. The proposed payment should be printed out after entering on the system and presented to someone else together with original documents with the bank account details on: this person should authorise the payment.

This sort of thing does not happen all the time because any organisation making a significant number of electronic payments has failsafe procedures like the above in place. Also, bank accounts generally include a check digit which makes it impossible for a single digit error or transposition to yield a valid account.

Unjust enrichment is not an offence.

There is not a form to fill in that will gain you an injunction on the bank to disclose their client: you need to prepare and present a case. The legal fees to resolve this are as you say going to be more than £1,500 and you are not going to be able to recover them from either bank or from the person receiving the money.

If the bookkeeper is self-employed they should have insurance which will cover them (engaging a bookkeeper without professional indemnity insurance is not a good idea). Otherwise I think it is probably unlikely that there is insurance covering the loss, unless perhaps it is covered by a Directors and Officers policy - the directors of the company are responsible for establishing procedures that safeguard the assets of the company so if the company sues you for negligence in this respect it might be covered. I wouldn't imagine that you would want to do this though.

[green12]

why not helpful? very helpful in fact. Good point about the bookkeepers insurance. She was operating on a self employed basis so that may be an avenue to explore. It is in fact my own Company so you are right, wouldn't want to sue myself!

We don't make a huge amount of online payments but this has definitely prompted me to do something about our policies and procedures regarding these types of payments and your suggestion of a second pair of eyes is a good one. It is difficult in a small business when everyone is so busy but as this situation has proved, essential.

thanks for your advice