Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

rescissory damages

Damages contemplated to restore a plaintiff to the position occupied before the defendant's wrongful acts. ( An award of rescissory damages may mean returning property to the original owner or, if that is not possible, paying the owner the monetary value of the property. restitution damages. Damages awarded to a plaintiff when the defendant has been unjustly enriched at the plaintiff's expense. "Suppose A pays money to B in pursuance of a contract which turns out to be void, or perhaps is subsequently frustrated: clearly A cannot sue B for breach of contract. B's promise to perform his side of the bargain is vitiated by the mistake or the frustrating event, so A's lost expectations are losses which he must just put up with. But his claim to repayment of the money is evidently much stronger: for this money is a tangible loss to A and a tangible enrichment to B. So in this sort of case the money will often be recoverable, though English lawyers think of this as a quasi-contractual claim to recover money as on a total failure of consideration, and not a contractual claim to restitution damages. There is, however, no strong reason for refusing to call this a contractual action, any more than there is a reason for calling an action for damages quasi-contractual." P.S. Atiyah, An Introduction to the Law of Contract 312 (3d ed. 1981).