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Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017

Contracts legislation - Frustrated contracts - Other valuable benefits

63: Sum may be recovered if party has obtained valuable benefit

You could also call this:

“You might have to pay back money if you got something valuable from an agreement that ended early”

If you’re part of an agreement and you get something valuable from it before it ends, you might need to pay some money back. This happens when someone else in the agreement did something to give you that valuable thing.

If this happens, the person who gave you the valuable thing can ask a court to decide how much money you should pay back. The court will look at everything that happened and try to be fair.

When the court is deciding, they’ll think about how much money you spent trying to do your part of the agreement. They’ll also think about any money you paid to someone else in the agreement that they get to keep. The court will consider how the end of the agreement affected the valuable thing you got.

The court won’t make you pay back more than the value of what you got. Also, if someone just gave you money, different rules apply to that.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6844143.

Topics:
Money and consumer rights > Consumer protection Business > Fair trading
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62: Court may allow party who has incurred expenses to retain or recover money, or

"Court can let you keep or get back money you spent on an unfinished job"

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64: Benefit may be treated as being obtained, or

"Court can treat a benefit given to someone else as if it was given to you"

Part 2 Contracts legislation
Frustrated contracts: Other valuable benefits

63Sum may be recovered if party has obtained valuable benefit

  1. This section applies if—

  2. a party to the contract (A) has obtained a valuable benefit before the time of discharge; and
    1. the benefit was obtained because of anything done by another party to the contract (B) in, or for the purpose of, performing the contract.

      1. B may recover from A the sum (if any) that the court considers just.

      2. For the purposes of subsection (2), the court must have regard to all the circumstances and, in particular,—

      3. the amount of any expenses incurred before the time of discharge by A in, or for the purpose of, performing the contract, including any money paid or payable by A to any other party under the contract and retained or recoverable by that party under section 62; and
        1. the effect, in relation to the benefit, of the circumstances that gave rise to the frustration of the contract.

          1. The sum that is recoverable must not exceed the value of the benefit to A.

          2. In this section and section 64, a benefit does not include a payment of money to which section 61 applies.

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