July/August 2015 #151

Birdseye & anr v Roythorne & Co & ors [2015] EWHC 1003 (Ch)

Roythorne & Co (Roythornes), a firm of solicitors, acted for Mr & Mrs Dring and, following his death on 28 September 2008, the executors of Mr Dring, Mr Pola and Mr Doubleday. Roythorne & Co (Roythornes), a firm of solicitors, acted for Mr & Mrs Dring and, following his death on 28 September 2008, the executors of Mr Dring, Mr Pola and Mr Doubleday. Mr & Mrs Dring were the only shareholders of Dring Bros Limited, which had acquired Manor Farm to enable Mrs Dring’s brother and sister in law (Mrs Cooke), who were the tenant farmers, to continue to live there. Roythornes...

Crociani & ors v Crociani & ors [2014] UKPC 40

By a trust deed dated 24 December 1987 (trust deed) Edoarda Crociani (settlor) settled a promissory note on herself and others for the benefit of her daughters, Cristiana Crociani (Cristiana) and Princess Camilla de Bourbon des Deux Siciles. The trust deed conferred extensive powers on the trustees in respect of both capital and income, including power to pay the whole or any part of the trust funds to another trust. Originally, it was provided that the forum for the administration of the trust and its construction should be governed by the law of the Bahamas. Clause 12(6), howe...

JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank & Anr v Pugachev [2015] EWCA Civ 139

In the early 1990s, Mr Pugachev founded the JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank (the bank) in Russia. It became one of Russia’s largest privately owned commercial banking groups. On 4 October 2010, the Russian Central Bank revoked its banking licence and appointed a ‘temporary administration’ and on 30 November 2010 it was declared insolvent by the Russian court and placed into temporary administration. The state corporation ‘Deposit Insurance Agency’ (the DIA) was appointed as liquidator. Mr Pugachev left Russia for London in 2011. The Russian liquidation of the bank was recognised by...

Kousouros v O’Halloran & anr [2014] EWHC 2294 (Ch)

The claimant (K) and second defendant (A) are brother and sister. They are the children of George Kousouros (D) who died in Cyprus in March 2007 leaving a large house in Islington (the property) where he had lived with K prior to returning to Cyprus in 2000 and which also provided a rental income. According to K, who still lives there and takes the rental income, D transferred the property to him in 2001 on terms which included a payment to A of £50,000 and pursuant on the oral terms his parents executed a deed of transfer of the registered title to the property in form TR1 which A was a...

P v P [2015] EWCA Civ 447

A husband and wife met in 1999 and married in 2003. They had one child together, of primary school age at the time of the proceedings. In 2005 the husband and wife moved into a farmhouse owned by the husband’s parents. In 2009 the husband’s parents settled the farmhouse on a discretionary trust for the benefit of their children and remoter descendants. Subject to the power to appoint the capital and income to the discretionary beneficiaries, the farmhouse was held on trust to pay the income to the husband for life, and it was declared that the making of any land comprised within the trus...

Public Guardian v SR & NC [2015] EWCOP 32 (Fam)

MC was born on 8 October 1937. Her husband died in 2004. She had two children: a son (NC) and a daughter (SR) aged 54 and 49 respectively.

On 12 June 2009, MC executed a lasting power of attorney (LPA) for property and affairs appointing NC and SR jointly and severally as her attorneys. The LPA was registered on 24 September 2009.

In October 2011, MC made a will leaving 95% of her estate to SR and the remaining 5% to NC. In March 2013, SR placed MC’s house on the market. NC suspected that SR was mismanaging MC’s affairs and on 22 April 2013 entered a restriction...

Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Limited & ors [2014] UKSC 52

The appeal arose from one of what were originally ten test cases in which the defendant home owners (the vendors) were persuaded to sell their properties to purchasers (the purchasers) who promised the vendors the right to remain in their homes after the sale. The purchasers bought the homes with the assistance of mortgages from lenders (the lenders), who were not given notice of the promises to the vendors. Neither the rights of occupation promised by the purchasers to the vendors nor the tenancies granted by the purchasers were permitted by the lenders’ mortgage. Exchange of contracts ...

Seddon & ors v HMRC [2015] UKFTT 140

The appellants were trustees of a discretionary settlement settled in 1999. The settlement’s original assets were five £1 ordinary shares in a limited company. In 2000 the settlement received a scrip dividend of preference shares in the company. The preference shares were sold by the trustees two days after their receipt. Their value was £1,382,750. Some nine years later and a few days before the settlement’s ten year anniversary the trustees made a distribution worth £1,260,361 to certain beneficiaries.

The principal issues concerning were:

1. 1. Whether the...