Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2024 #195The parties were siblings and beneficiaries of a trust established by their parents. In addition, the defendants were also the trustees. The claimant applied to appoint a judicial trustee in place of the defendants on the basis that the defendants had engaged in conduct that appeared to have been in breach of their duties as trustees or may have been dishonest. The parties had previously entered into an arbitration agreement before the Beth Din of the Federation of Synagogues. The court and the tribunal had previously determined that the tribunal had jurisdiction to consider the claim. T...
Does conferring with a consultant absolve a junior doctor? Rajkiran Barhey summarises a recent case ‘While at first blush it may seem unfair to require the same standard of care from junior doctors as their more senior colleagues, a number of considerations must be borne in mind.’ The Scottish case of Andrews v Greater Glasgow …
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Shahram Sharghy reports on a case that concerned whether a duty of care was owed by a non-medically-trained receptionist ‘As soon as the claimant had been “booked in”, he entered into a relationship with the defendant of patient and healthcare provider. The scope of the duty extends to taking reasonable care not to provide misleading …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Autumn 2018 #173T died intestate. D1, one of the administrators of T’s estate, purchased a property using estate funds to cover around 40% of the purchase price, without informing P, one of the beneficiaries of the estate. Soon after completion of the purchase, D1 repaid the money to the estate, with interest at a rate that he selected, labelling the transaction as a loan. Later, when the property’s value had increased, P became aware of D1’s actions and brought proceedings to recover the profit made by him.
Held
D1 was a fiduciary who had made a profit by the application of his principal’...
Richard Palmer assesses recent decisions on wrongful trading and misfeasance ‘The test for use of the ss214/246ZB(3) defence is not only that the steps taken were intended to reduce the net deficiency to creditors, but that risk of loss to “new“ creditors had to be minimised.‘ There are two aspects of wrongful trading and misfeasance …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2016 #164Michael and Philip Noble were brothers who built up a substantial property empire known as the Noble Organisation. It had a complex ownership and management structure involving a number of companies and partnerships and certain trusts for the benefit of their respective families. Michael died in 2006. The executors were Philip, his widow Gillian, and John Barnsley (an accountant associated with PricewaterhouseCoopers). There was a demerger of the business side and property side of the Noble Organisation with Philip taking the business assets and Gill taking the property assets. This was ...
Andrew Mckie examines the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act (ERRA) 2013 and the impact of the Small Claims Track (2017) ‘Claimant lawyers will now have to be more careful than ever to show there has been a breach of duty of the common law duty of care and that breach caused the accident.’ It may …
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Vicarious liability; breach of duty; protection for victims of tort; employment relationship ‘Technical arguments about employment status will not save a defendant from vicarious liability, since the approach looks at the business reality.’ Who would have thought a generation ago that the prison service would be held vicariously liable for the negligence of a prisoner? …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2015 #154OL was born on 15 November 1937. Her husband died in 1993. She had three children: an elder son (ES) who is 53, a daughter (DA) aged 51 and a younger son (YS) aged 48.
OL used to live in a maisonette in Stockwell, London. In 2010, DA moved in with OL ostensibly to look after her. In 2011, OL was diagnosed with vascular dementia and on 17 July 2013 she suffered a stroke. According to ES, OL scored 8 out of 30 on a mini mental state examination on 21 August 2013, suggesting that she had severe cognitive impairment at that time.
On 19 October 2013, OL executed a lasting power ...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | October 2014 #143Mr John Bayley settled property on trust on 17 November 1983. He died in 1987. The trust was established with the assistance of the settlor’s longstanding business associate and friend, Mr Derek Gray, who provided various services to the trust through the first defendant, SG Associates (SGA), a company of which he was a director. From 1998, Mr Gray was also director of a US company known as Clean Diesel Technologies (CDT), which developed, designed, marketed and licensed technologies and solutions for the reduction of emissions from combustion engines. He was also a director of SGA...
