Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2023 #191A father made repeated promises to his son that he would inherit an undefined part of a farm, sufficient to enable him to operate a viable farming business on it, after the death of his parents. Relying on that promise, the son spent the best part of his working life on the farm, working at very low wages and accommodated in a farm cottage. After a deterioration in the relationship between the father and son, it proved no longer possible for the two to work together, and the son therefore moved out, and the father cut him out of his will.
The son claimed an interest in the farm as...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Web OnlyThe respondent (who had been the claimant at first instance) was the eldest son of the two appellants. He had worked on the family farm full-time for some 33 years, until his relationship with his parents deteriorated. The respondent then brought proceedings against the appellants seeking a declaration of his entitlement to a beneficial interest in the farm on the basis of an alleged proprietary estoppel. At first instance, the court found in his favour, concluding that the first appellant had consistently and over time led the respondent to believe that he would inherit a sufficient sta...
Gwendoline Davies explores Supreme Court case law on contractual damages ‘It is necessary for the court to consider post-breach events known at the assessment of damages if they are relevant to and affect the claimant’s loss.’ Commercial parties are generally aware that a breach of contract gives rise, in the majority of cases, to a …
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Jeremy Glover examines the recoverability of overheads and profits as part of a damages claim ‘A contractor must show that, had it not been for the breach of contract, its labour force would otherwise have been profitably employed on other work, thereby making a contribution to the contractor’s fixed overheads.’ The judgment in Fluor v …
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Failure to advise clients of risk can have serious financial consequences. David Greene and Dominic de Bono consider a recent equitable compensation claim ‘Jackson LJ held that this was a category 2 advice case, noting that this was not a “conventional conveyancing situation“. While the purchasers had taken the decision to purchase a property in …
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Katherine Souter assesses the status of an award of damages for breach of the public procurement rules ‘What needs to happen fairly soon is for another case to come before the UKSC, which is referred to the CJEU for clarification, so that we have legal clarity on this issue before the UK leaves the CJEU’s …
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Doug Wass and Nikolas Ireland provide an update on contractual remedies ‘While the principle remains that a party does not intend to give up common law rights without making it clear it intends to do so, it should not operate as a blind presumption to the detriment of proper analysis of the clause in question.’ …
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Kayleigh Bloomfield looks at Wrotham Park damages ‘The Wrotham Park remedy attempts to quantify a sum which might reasonably have been negotiated between the parties as a quid pro quo for giving permission to the wrongdoer to act contrary to his or her contractual obligations.’ Restrictive covenants may be instinctively characterised as belonging to the …
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David Williams reports on a recent judgment on misrepresentation ‘In order to establish that WZL was legally responsible, Monde had to show that WZL either actually authorised Bafel to make the representations, or by its words or conduct represented or permitted it to be represented to Monde that Bafel had that authority.’The High Court recently …
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