The Railway’s Unjustified Enrichment as a Result of Abuse of the Right in Obligations To Carry Goods

The paper examines issues related to unscrupulous behavior of the railways, which unthoroughly benefit at the expense of other participants of the obligations for the carriage of goods. The paper considered cases where the railways use legally valid facts (transactions) as imaginary grounds for obtaining property (money) from freight and cargo owners and encourage them to provide the undue. It is proposed to qualify such a conduct of the railways as an abuse of the right committed for the purpose of unjustified enrichment. Based on the analysis of complex contractual relations (contracts on carriage organization, contracts in the form of submission and acceptance of an application for the carriage of goods, contracts of carriage of goods, etc.) arising between the participants of legal relations concerning the carriage of goods (shippers, consignees, owners of infrastructure and carriers), the author has identified conditions that are conducive to receiving unjustified enrichment by the railways, namely: combining different legal statuses by the railways (carrier, owner of infrastructure, agent of a third party, etc.), removal from the railways of the burden of performing obligations and risks of liability for the failure to perform obligations, the position of a weaker party assigned to the railways’ contractual counterparties. According to the author, in order to prevent references to legal facts as grounds for enrichment, the economic purpose of the legal relationship must be recognized as an appropriate ground. It is noted that such an economic goal is one for the goals pursued by the whole system of legal relations for the carriage of goods and that its violation deprives the railways of the right to demand execution under the transaction, since making this claim must be considered as an abuse of the right. It is argued that the contractual counterparty of the railways, aware of the absence of grounds for granting property on its part, does not commit a legal error, as soon is it is a weaker party to the contract.

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