(B) EXPLOITATION
Sometimes a statutory provision which makes a transaction illegal is regarded as existing for the purposes of protecting from exploitation a particular group of people to which the claimant belongs. In such a case the claimant is regarded as not being in pari delicto with the defendant and so restitution will be allowed. This is illustrated by Kiriri Cotton Co Ltd v Dewani249 where the claimant tenant paid a premium to his landlord in circumstances where both parties were unaware that such a payment was illegal by virtue of a statute. The claimant was allowed to recover the premium because it was held that the statute existed to protect tenants like him and so the parties were not in pari delicto. In other words, the responsibility for ensuring compliance with the law was placed on the landlord rather than the tenant. Although this was not a case where the landlord had set out to exploit the claimant in contravention of the statute, it is at least a case where there was a potential for exploitation, as reflected by the fact that a statute was enacted to protect tenants.
For restitution to be awarded on this ground it is necessary to determine whether the policy of the statute is to protect people like the claimant.2 0 So, for example, in Green v Portsmouth Stadium Ltd251 it was held that money paid by a bookmaker to the owner of a racecourse in excess of the amount authorized by statute was an illegal payment, but that it could not be recovered because the relevant statutory provision had not been enacted for the purpose of protecting bookmakers from exploitation, but sought simply to regulate racecourses.
