When money is misdirected, recipients may be personally liable for the full amount received. Tracing may show that the value which they received survives in assets which they still hold. To that extent, it may be possible to assert proprietary interests in those assets. Somebody may have helped the misdirection. If so, a personal claim may also succeed against the helper. Unlike the claims against recipients as such, a claim against someone who helped is not restitutionary but compensatory. The recipient is liable in unjust enrichment and, history apart, the helper is liable in tort. Litigation in this field has become frequent. This paper briefly reviews five recent cases. A simple method will be followed. First their facts and results will be outlined in chronological order. Then the paper will ask what light they throw on the two principal problems endemic in the types of claim which have just been introduced.1

SBC Securities was an indirect result of Black Monday. The stock market crashed on 19 October 1987, just after Eagle had made an offer for Samuelson Group Plc. The crash wrecked the offer and imposed a heavy burden on the underwriters, of whom SBC was one, and on the sub-underwriters, among whom were Ferriday, chief executive of Eagle, and Earnshaw Haes. Nevertheless, SBC shortly afterwards received £13.5 million from a Panamanian company in discharge of the subunderwriting obligations of Ferriday and Earnshaw Haes. With that and other money it met its own obligations. Eagle now alleged that the £13.5 million was its money, misappropriated by Ferriday. Eagle sought to recover the £13.5 million either on the ground that SBC had assisted the fraudulent misdirection by Ferriday or that SBC was liable qua recipient. They pleaded a series of facts in support of the allegation that SBC ought to have known that it was receiving misappropriated money. SBC successfully moved to have the statement of claim struck out. Having reviewed the allegations of fact and having noted that the defendants had given value for the money they had received, Vinelott, J., concluded that the pleadings