#6767 - Sempra Metals Ltd. V. Commissioners Of Inland Revenue - Restitution of Unjust Enrichment BCL

Sempra Metal Ltd. v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue

Facts

This case is about companies which, because they had to pay part of their mainstream corporation tax prematurely, suffered a timing disadvantage which conferred a corresponding timing advantage on the Revenue. We now know that the absence of the power to make group income elections in the case of these companies which resulted in the premature payment of corporation tax was contrary to article 52 of the EC Treaty (now article 43) which guarantees freedom of establishment: Metallgesellschaft Ltd v Inland Revenue Commissioners [2001] Ch 620. Community law requires that the companies must be provided with a remedy in domestic law which will enable them to recover a sum equal to the interest which would have been generated by the advance payments from the date of the payment of the ACT until the date on which the MCT became chargeable.

In the concluding sentence of para 96 the Court recalled that, in the absence of Community rules, it is for the domestic legal system of the member state concerned to lay down the detailed procedural rules governing such actions, “including ancillary questions such as the payment of interest”.

Issue

Is award for restitution of the value of money that is measured by compound interest?

Holding

Lord Hope

Common law Right; not equitable

In Kleinwort Benson Ltd v Lincoln City Council [1999] 2 AC 349, 372G-373B Lord Goff of Chieveley referred to the development of a coherent law of restitution, a doctrine first recognised by this House in Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd [1991] 2 AC 548, 577-578. He said there was a general right of recovery of money paid under a mistake and that it was founded upon the principle of unjust enrichment… At p 379H he said that, subject to any applicable defences, the payer was "entitled" to recover the money paid under a mistake. Throughout his speech he was addressing a common law remedy, not one that was available in equity. I think that it can now be taken as settled that, under the Kleinwort Benson principle, a cause of action at common law is available for money paid under a mistake of law: Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group plc v IRC[2007] 1 AC 558, para 62. I also think that the time has come to recognise that the court has jurisdiction at common law to award compound interest where the claimant seeks a restitutionary remedy for the time value of money paid under a mistake.

Recognition that the court has jurisdiction to award compound interest at common law is a short, but logical, step in the further development of the restitutionary remedy. It follows from the fact that the right to recover money paid under a mistake is available at common law. To treat the choice of remedy in unjust enrichment as discretionary would, in my opinion, be inconsistent with the common law right that gives rise to it.

Not necessary to have identity of gain and loss

The question then is whether the claimant in unjust enrichment must nevertheless have suffered a loss corresponding to the defendant's enrichment. InUnjust Enrichment2nd ed, pp 167-168, Professor Birks said that there was no need for this to be the measure of the enrichment:

"By insisting, artificially but firmly, on an enlargement of the everyday sense of 'restitution' we avoid being accidentally trapped by the choice of a word into believing that the answer must be yes. If 'restitution' meant 'giving back', no other answer would be possible. The larger meaning leaves the matter open. An alternative strategy to the same effect would be to switch from 'restitution' to 'disgorgement', which has no restrictive overtone."

I would apply the reasoning in these passages to the claim for interest in this case. A remedy in unjust enrichment is not claim of damages. Nor is it a contractual remedy, so there is no need to search for an express or an implied term as the basis for recovery.

The essence of the claim is that the Revenue was unjustly enriched because Sempra paid the tax when it did in the mistaken belief that it was obliged to do so when in fact it was being levied prematurely. So the Revenue must give back to Sempra the whole of the benefit of the enrichment which it obtained. The process is one of subtraction, not compensation.

Disgorgement Distinguished from Restitution

But Professor Birk's use of the word "disgorgement" is controversial, and it is misleading when applied to the facts of this case. Steven Elliott makes this point when he says, in the context of the equitable jurisdiction, that disgorgement interest is calculated to strip profits the fiduciary has made through the use of trust property: "Rethinking Interest on Withheld and Misapplied Trust Money" [2001] 65 Conv 313, 316. Mr Rabinowitz QC said that Sempra was seeking restitution, not disgorgement. Disgorgement would be appropriate if the claimant was seeking to recover the actual profits that the defendant had made as a result of the enrichment. But Sempra does not ask for an account of profits, nor does it invite the court to look at the use, if any, to which the money was actually put by the Revenue. Furthermore it is accepted that the claim is personal, not a proprietary one. But, as in cases of property other than money where the claim includes restitution for the value of the use of the asset that was transferred, subtraction of the enrichment from the defendant includes more than the return of the money that was transferred at its nominal or face value. That value, in this case, has already been accounted for. The subject matter of Sempra's claim is the time value of the enrichment. This is the amount that has to be assessed.

Compound Interest: Commercial Realities

But money has a value, and in my opinion the measure of the right to subtraction of the enrichment that resulted from its receipt does not depend on proof by Sempra of what the Revenue actually did with it. It was the opportunity to turn the money to account during the period of the enrichment that passed from Sempra to the Revenue. This is the benefit which the defendant is presumed to have derived from money in its hands, as Lord Walker puts it in para 180. The Revenue accepts that the money it received prematurely had a value, but it says that the restitutionary award should take the form of simple interest. I do not think that such an award would be consistent with principle. Simple interest is an artificial construct which has no relation to the way money is obtained or turned to account in the real world. It is an imperfect way of measuring the time value of what was received prematurely. Restitution requires that the entirety of the time value of the money that was paid prematurely be transferred back to Sempra by the Revenue.

All this points to the conclusion, subject to what I say later about onus (see paras 47, 48) that, for restitution to be given for the time value of the money which was paid prematurely, the principal sum to be awarded in this case should be calculated on the basis of compound interest.

Burden of Proof

But in Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York v Lothian Regional Council, 1995 SC 151, 165 I said that, once the pursuer has averred the necessary ingredients to show that prima facie he is entitled to the remedy, it is for the defender to raise the issues which may lead to a decision that the remedy should be refused on grounds of equity. This approach was based on the principle that a party ought not be required to produce proof of matters that are unlikely to be within his own knowledge.

Once the claimant has shown that prima facie he is entitled to a restitutionary remedy, direct knowledge of the extent of the benefit, if any, that has been received can be assumed to lie with the recipient. It is open to the recipient to demonstrate that there was no actual enrichment when the money fell into his hands notwithstanding the opportunity to turn it to account. But the case for the Revenue was not that it did not use the money at all. On the contrary, its evidence was that, because of the nature of the financial relationship between the Government and the Bank of England, it was impossible to measure the amount of interest earned or saved by it, or by the Government generally, on the sample ACT payments paid by Sempra. It was not that there was no actual benefit, but that the benefit was extremely difficult to quantify. It seems to me that, on this evidence, the assumption that the Revenue derived some benefit from the receipt of the money prematurely has not been displaced, and that this justifies resort to a conventional rate of interest as the measure of that benefit.

But I would hold that it is open to the enrichee to show that it would have been able to borrow money at rates or on terms more favourable to it than those available in the ordinary commercial market. If it can do that, then ordinary rates and other terms must give way to those that are relevant to the circumstances of the enrichee. The unusual position of the Revenue has been sufficiently demonstrated.

Enrichment calculated according to Government rates

For these reasons I agree with Lord Nicholls and Lord Walker that Sempra's claim for restitution ought to be measured by an award of compound interest at conventional rates calculated by reference to the rates of interest and other terms applicable to borrowing by the Government in the market during the relevant period.

Lord Nicholls

In principle this claim is unanswerable. The benefits transferred by Sempra to the Inland Revenue comprised, in short, (1) the amounts of tax paid...