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I would add a third possibility to Rob's list: if and to the extent that the purchaser has paid the purchase price to the vendor, this also makes a kind of perfectionary constructive trust. This principle does not depend on specific enforceability or title documents. And unlike the trust arising from specific enforceability, it requires that income from the land be accounted for to the purchaser.

Lionel

On 12 Mar 2004, at 12:15, Rob Chambers wrote:

Thanks very much for your posting, Jason. To answer your question below about remedies for B and C, in English law, B and C would be the beneficial owners of the flat under a constructive trust, but this has nothing to do with unjust enrichment. It is what Elias called a "perfectionary" constructive trust, which arises to perfect an imperfectly realised intention to benefit another person. There are two events that could produce this trust in the facts you related: (1) a specifically enforceable contract of sale and (2) B and C have the transfer documents and the power to obtain legal title without A's help (Re Rose). In common law Canada, they may be out of luck on (1) thanks to dicta in Semelhago v Paramadevan [1996] 2 SCR 415, but should succeed on (2).