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This course will cover the remedies available for both common law and equitable wrongs in the commercial context (broadly interpreted).
Remedies for breach of fiduciary duty will be considered alongside breach of contract, for example, but remedies for personal injury and death will not be analysed in any detail. The aim is to understand the basis of both monetary and non-monetary remedies. Such an understanding is best obtained through a clear analysis of the leading cases and doctrine, in order to appreciate why the courts award certain remedies following commercial disputes.
Students with an interest in commercial law and litigation will enjoy this module. So will those who want to take an advanced obligations course. The module has been designed to sit alongside the modules on Restitution of Unjust Enrichment and International and Commercial Trusts Law, and students can take all three of these in conjunction without any significant repetition of material.
Each week students are expected to read cases, textbook chapters and articles for class discussion and/or to prepare answers to problem questions which will be discussed in class. The teaching style is interactive: students are expected to ask and answer questions, make their own points and debate issues.
Module syllabus
This module is subject to change.
The module topics include:
- Compensation (this will take up the first half of Term 1)
- Restitution for wrongs
- Agreed remedies
- Termination
- Action for the agreed sum
- Specific performance
- Injunction
- Election
Recommended materials
There is no one textbook that covers the whole module. Perhaps the most useful book is still A Burrows, Remedies for Torts and Breach of Contract (3rd ed, OUP, 2004). A new edition is expected to be published in June 2019, before the start of the 2019-20 academic year: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/remedies-for-torts-breach-of-contract-and-equitable-wrongs-9780198705932?q=andrew%20burrows&lang=en&cc=gb.
Reference will also be made to many of the essays contained in G Virgo and S Worthington, Commercial Remedies: Resolving Controversies (CUP, 2017).
Module reading lists and other module materials will be provided via online module pages, available at the beginning of term once students have enrolled.
Preliminary reading
None is required, but students may look at the books suggested under ‘recommended materials’.
Key information
| Module details | |
|---|---|
| Credit value: | 30 credits (15 ECTS, 300 learning hours) |
| Convenor: | Charles Mitchell (Term One); Magda Raczynska (Term One); Paul S Davies (Term Two |
| Other Teachers: | None |
| Teaching Delivery: | 20 x 2-hour weekly seminars, 10 seminars per term, Term One and Two |
| Who may enrol: | Any UCL Master’s student |
| Prerequisites: | There are no pre-requisites for this module, but students who are not already skilled at independently distilling legal principles from a complex body of case law will find it difficult. As it is an advanced obligations course, students who have not previously studied obligations under a common law system will also find it challenging. Remedies for breach of contract, torts, and equitable wrongs will be discussed, and students who are unfamiliar with the substantive legal principles of contract, tort and equity in a common law jurisdiction will need to do extra work before the seminars to familiarise themselves with these principles. |
| Must not be taken with: | None |
| Qualifying module for: | LLM in International Commercial Law |
| Assessment | |
| Practice Assessment: | Opportunity for feedback on one optional practice essay per term (two in total) |
| Final Assessment: | Exam (100%) |