Greetings,
The Supreme Court of Canada released a brief but important decision today on the relationship between resulting trusts and unjust enrichment: Nishi v. Rascal Trucking Ltd., 2013 SCC 33 <
http://canlii.ca/t/fz572>.
The appellant argued that Canadian law should move in the direction of replacing the traditional law of purchase money resulting trusts with a flexible analysis based on unjust enrichment and constructive trusts. The respondent won on this legal point,
although the appeal was allowed on the basis that the trial judge had effectively found that the plaintiff had intended to part with all beneficial interest in the part of the purchase price that it provided.
The appellant's argument did raise an interesting question about the relationship between resulting trusts and constructive trusts in Canadian law. The Court chose not to engage with this, but it is an issue that will not obviously go away. In particular,
it is unclear why constructive trusts to reverse unjust enrichment should be discretionary, while resulting trusts that also seem to reverse unjust enrichment should not be.
For those who might be interested, I mention that the Supreme Court of Canada web site (
http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca) now includes the parties' facta, and also (for most cases) a recording of the oral argument. You can find these under the "cases" tab on the
left side of the screen.
Lionel
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