CL-2018-000297, CL-2018-000404, CL-2018-000590, - [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm)

In relation to coordinated transfers, HHJ Bird took a very restrictive view of that concept in Tecnimont Arabia Ltd v National Westminster Bank plc [2022] EWHC 1172 (Comm), holding as a result that the ordinary operation of an international banking payment mechanism, not involving relationships of principal and agent, meant that the originating payor’s intended payee, via the banking chain, was not enriched at the expense of the payor. On that point, HHJ Paul Matthews differed, and refused to follow Tecnimont, in Terna Energy Trading doo v Revolut Ltd [2024] EWHC 1419 (Comm); and I consider that to be clearly the better view (so the question of when a third judge at first instance should depart from the considered decision of a second puisne judge not to follow the decision of a first does not arise). (I noted what Tecnimont had decided in “Unjust enrichment scholarship in the courts: use and utility” [2023] LMCLQ 624, at 641; but the focus of that article was on judicial methods and the influence of the academic writers in the field, not the soundness or otherwise of the decisions noted.)