Equity And Trust Law Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Equity And Trust Law Assignment - Essay Example In both areas Lord Diplock can be seen to challenge the validity of legal technicalities and create a more just legal system with a move away from ‘natural justice’ in individual determinations to general principles of fairness towards the wider public. Lord Diplock’s key contributions to equity law occurred in: 1) In United Scientific Holdings Ltd v Burnley Borough Council [1978]1, Lord Diplock proclaimed that the systems had, quite simply, become fused and that no distinction was to be drawn between law and equity. This statement by Lord Diplock was accepted unanimously by the judges in the House of Lords and propelled the debate on this issue further. The case concerned the timing of the service of notices triggering rent-review clauses. 2) In Gissing v Gissing [1971]2; on the subject of equitable rights and the interests of the beneficiary in a trust case, Lord Diplock suggested that it did not matter whether the trust was seen as a constructive, resulting or other form of implied trust. Lord Diplock's judgment in Gissing effectively created what is now referred to as a common intention constructive trust. Essentially Diplock held that where the legal title to a property was owned by one person, cohabitees would be held to share a beneficial interest in the property even if they had not contributed directly to the purchase price (thus falling beyond the protection of the resulting trust) as long as they could provide evidence that both cohabitees had a common intention that the beneficial interest would be shared, and that the legal owner had induced the beneficiary to act to his own detriment in reliance of this agreement. Crucially, however, he saw no need to properly establish the boundaries of this principle, or to distinguish common intention constructive trusts from implied or presumed resulting trusts. Lord Diplock's failure to properly distinguish between resulting and constructive trusts has led to a very dangerous ambiguity and uncertainty in this area of law, which has arguably, ever since threatened to defeat precisely what Lord Diplock set out to achieve: the protection of the cohabitee with no legal title. 3) Pettitt v Pettitt [1970]3; this case established that a person who claims to have contributed to the purchase price of property which stands in the name of him/herself and another can rely on the well known presumption of equity that a person who has contributed a share of the purchase price of property is entitled to a corresponding proportionate beneficial interest in the property by way of implied or resulting trust. This ‘presumption of advancement rule’ in resulting trusts has been widely criticised as anachronistic. In particular, the gender bias of the rule is no longer acceptable; in fact it contravenes Article 5 of the Seventh Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.4 Lord Diplock described it as being based on the mores of propertied classes of the nineteenth ce ntury with little relevance to modern life. As Lord Diplock put it; â€Å"The emergence of a property-owning, particularly a real-property-mortgaged-to-a-building-society-owning, democracy requires the presumption to be reconsidered.†5 4) Hadmor Productions Ltd v Hamilton [1982]6; in this case Lord Diplock held that the Court of Appeal was