2012Da108368 Loans

A

B A.

Seoul High Court Decision 2012Na220 Decided November 9, 2012

June 24, 2015

The judgment below is reversed and the case is remanded to Seoul High Court.

We examine the grounds of appeal.

1. According to the reasoning of the judgment of the court below, the court below accepted the judgment of the court of first instance, and acknowledged that the non-party D, who was the defendant's purchasing person, has a claim against E Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "E"), and it is difficult for the plaintiff to recover the claim in fact due to E. It can be a problem if the claim is not recovered up to that time. The defendant's auditor, an executive officer, was scheduled to return the claim up to that time. The plaintiff sent the sum of KRW 126,190,880 from the plaintiff's account to the defendant's account in the name of E five times, and determined that the plaintiff temporarily paid the debt to the defendant of E and received a refund from the defendant by subrogation according to the end of the defendant's person responsible for the defendant, such as D, and thus, at the time of the aforementioned transfer, the plaintiff's payment was made by subrogation from the plaintiff to the defendant, and therefore, the defendant could not have a legal interest without any legal ground.

2. However, it is difficult to accept the above determination by the court below for the following reasons. Even according to the above facts acknowledged by the court below, the plaintiff accepted the request for subrogation because D would return the amount of subrogated payment again, and accordingly, the plaintiff thought that the subrogation is temporary and the amount of subrogated payment made by the defendant later and paid money to the defendant. According to this, it is reasonable to view that the contract for subrogation and the return made between the plaintiff and D constituted a single contract as a corresponding relation or a consideration relationship. Therefore, the validity of the return agreement should be determined in full. Therefore, as long as the return agreement is not effective to the defendant due to the non-authorized representation, the contract for subrogation is also invalid to the defendant. Therefore, the amount received by the defendant pursuant to the invalid subrogation agreement shall be returned to the plaintiff because there is no legal ground. Nevertheless, the court below's determination that the defendant cannot be deemed to have obtained a benefit without any legal ground is erroneous by misapprehending the legal principles on return of unjust enrichment.

3. Therefore, without any need to decide on the remaining grounds of appeal, the lower judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with this Opinion. It is so decided as per Disposition by the assent of all participating Justices on the bench.

Justices Kim In-bok

Chief Justice Min Il-young

Justices Park Young-young

Justices Kim Jong-il