Borrower insolvency and Quistclose trusts; creditor claims following insolvency of settlor or corporate trustee; exploration of the limits of the elasticity of the private trust; beneficiary's rights to information; validity of non-charitable purpose trusts; and the jurisdictional reach of the US courts.

Abstract

Dicta abound in the law reports to the effect that persons ‘engaged in business can be regarded as capable of looking after themselves’. But those dicta merely describe how things stand between parties looking out for their own interests. They are irrelevant to situations in which people, otherwise well capable of looking after themselves, engage commercially by placing trust and confidence in others. For example, the members of a law firm all might have PhDs, and years of hard-bitten commercial experience under their belts. Yet ‘a stronger case of fiduciary relationship cannot be conceived than that which exists between partners’. Another example is the Quistclose trust that arises where money is advanced for a particular purpose. In his Preface to Swadling, The Quistclose Trust: Critical Essays, Lord Millett described this as ‘the single most important application of equitable principles in commercial life’, and said that it is easily described from the commercial viewpoint as: