Fiduciaries, bribes and constructive trusts—a policy-based justification

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 835-840
Author(s):  
Mark Belshaw

Abstract The Supreme Court in FHR European Ventures LLP v Cedar Capital Partners LLC [2015] AC 250 made clear that a fiduciary who breaches his fiduciary duties by receiving a bribe will hold that bribe on constructive trust for his principal. This article suggests that the law’s response to a breach of fiduciary duty is focused on the wrong of breach, rather than on enforcing the fiduciary’s primary duties. Viewed through this prism, a more thorough justification than that identified by the Supreme Court is necessary for imposing a constructive trust over a bribe. This article suggests that there is no principled reason for imposing a constructive trust, but that the justification is rooted in the policies underlying the entirety of the law of fiduciary duties—deterrence and prophylaxis.

1969 ◽  
pp. 453
Author(s):  
Susan Barkehall Thomas

This article explores the conceptual development of third party liability for participation in a breach of fiduciary duty. The author provides a critical analysis of the foundations of third party liability in Canada and chronicles the evolution of context-specific liability tests. In particular, the tests for the liability of banks and directors are developed in their specific contexts. The author then provides a reasoned critique of the Supreme Court of Canada's recent trend towards context-independent tests. The author concludes by arguing that the current approach is inadequate and results in an incoherent framework for the law of third party liability in Canada.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward M. Iacobucci

AbstractWhile corporate fiduciary duties in many jurisdictions are generally understood to be owed to shareholders, recent Canadian Supreme Court cases have held that directors owe their duties to the corporation, period, not to shareholders or any other stakeholders. This development has introduced significant indeterminacy to the law since it is not clear what such a conception of the duty requires. The Supreme Court did, however, make one clear statement: it held that directors owe a fiduciary duty to ensure that their corporations obey statutory law. Such a duty encourages compliance with law, but may over-encourage compliance: individual directors do not necessarily gain personally from legal breaches, but may lose personally from them because of fiduciary liability, so they will have excessively strong incentives to avoid such breaches. The Article connects the fiduciary duty to obey law with recent developments in financial regulation that have increased the obligations on directors of financial institutions to oversee risk. By requiring directors to be engaged with risk at a governance level, regulators have enhanced the probability that directors will face liability under their fiduciary duties if their institutions do not comply with financial regulations. As the Article explains, the policy tradeoff between enhanced compliance benefits and over-compliance costs of fiduciary liability is different in the context of financial regulation from that in other settings. For example, significant corporate penalties, as opposed to penalties borne by individual directors, may be inconsistent with the prudential goals of regulation, perhaps because of toobig- to-fail concerns. The fiduciary duty to cause the corporation to obey financial regulation, and a stricter application of this duty than the highly deferential standard that exists in Delaware law, has advantages that do not exist in other legal and regulatory contexts.


Author(s):  
Aiman Nariman Mohd Sulaiman ◽  
Mohsin Hingun

For more than a century Lister v Stubbs (1890) 45 Ch D 1 stood as authoritative Court of Appeal judgment denying the recovery of profits acquired from the successful investment of gains obtained in breach of fiduciary duties. The rule was rationalized on the basis that while the claimant was entitled to the proceeds so unlawfully obtained, he lacked any form of proprietary title to the profits accumulated by the defaulting fiduciary. The harsh reality of the rule produced an unfair outcome to the claimant and the Privy Council refused to apply it in Attorney-General for Hong Kong v Reid [1994] 1 AC 324. The rule also fell out of favour in other leading commonwealth jurisdictions and recently the English courts at all levels had the opportunity to reassess its relevance when the Supreme Court in FHR European Ventures LLP and others v Cedar Capital Partners LLC [2014] 4 All ER 79 consigned it to oblivion. The objective of this paper is to analyse the merits and the deficiencies of the rule and show how the judges of the English courts were prepared to act on policy ground, in comity with other common law jurisdictions in upholding justice in a borderless world. Keywords: breach of Fiduciary duty; Accounts of profits; Proprietary interests; Recovery of pure profits.


2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 490-493
Author(s):  
Matthew Conaglen

FHR bought a long lease for €211.5 million. Cedar Capital conducted the negotiations on FHR's behalf, but also received a €10 million commission from the vendor. On becoming aware of this commission, FHR sought to recover it from Cedar Capital. As its negotiating agent, Cedar Capital owed fiduciary duties to FHR, and had not obtained FHR's fully informed consent to the commission. Cedar Capital therefore had to account to FHR for the commission. However, applying the Court of Appeal's decision in Sinclair Investments (UK) Ltd. v Versailles Trade Finance Ltd. [2011] EWCA Civ 347, [2012] Ch. 453, Simon J. held that the remedy was purely personal; FHR could not assert a proprietary constructive trust over the €10 million: FHR European Ventures LLP v Mankarious [2011] EWHC 2999 (Ch). The Court of Appeal allowed an appeal as to remedy, distinguishing the facts from those in Sinclair v Versailles, but also casting some doubt on the correctness of that decision: [2013] EWCA Civ 17, [2014] Ch. 1. The Supreme Court was thus required to pass judgment on the voluminous debate as to whether English law should follow Lister & Co. v Stubbs (1890) 45 Ch.D. 1, or Attorney-General for Hong Kong v Reid [1994] 1 A.C. 324.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Budi Suhariyanto

Diskresi sebagai wewenang bebas, keberadaannya rentan akan disalahgunakan. Penyalahgunaan diskresi yang berimplikasi merugikan keuangan negara dapat dituntutkan pertanggungjawabannya secara hukum administrasi maupun hukum pidana. Mengingat selama ini peraturan perundang-undangan tentang pemberantasan tindak pidana korupsi tidak merumuskan secara rinci yang dimaksudkan unsur menyalahgunakan kewenangan maka para hakim menggunakan konsep penyalahgunaan wewenang dari hukum administrasi. Problema muncul saat diberlakukannya Undang-Undang Nomor 30 Tahun 2014 dimana telah memicu persinggungan dalam hal kewenangan mengadili penyalahgunaan wewenang (termasuk diskresi) antara Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara dengan Pengadilan Tindak Pidana Korupsi. Pada perkembangannya, persinggungan kewenangan mengadili tersebut ditegaskan oleh Peraturan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 4 Tahun 2015 bahwa PTUN berwenang menerima, memeriksa, dan memutus permohonan penilaian ada atau tidak ada penyalahgunaan wewenang (termasuk diskresi) dalam Keputusan dan/atau Tindakan Pejabat Pemerintahan sebelum adanya proses pidana. Sehubungan tidak dijelaskan tentang definisi dan batasan proses pidana yang dimaksud, maka timbul penafsiran yang berbeda. Perlu diadakan kesepakatan bersama dan dituangkan dalam regulasi tentang tapal batas persinggungan yang jelas tanpa meniadakan kewenangan pengujian penyalahgunaan wewenang diskresi pada Pengadilan TUN.Discretion as free authority is vulnerable to being misused. The abuse of discretion implicating the state finance may be prosecuted by both administrative and criminal law. In view of the fact that the law on corruption eradication does not formulate in detail the intended element of authority abuse, the judges use the concept of authority abuse from administrative law. Problems arise when the enactment of Law No. 30 of 2014 triggered an interception in terms of justice/ adjudicate authority on authority abuse (including discretion) between the Administrative Court and Corruption Court. In its development, the interception of justice authority is affirmed by Regulation of the Supreme Court Number 4 of 2015 that the Administrative Court has the authority to receive, examine and decide upon the appeal there is or there is no misuse of authority in the Decision and / or Action of Government Officials prior to the criminal process. That is, shortly before the commencement of the criminal process then that's when the authority of PTUN decides to judge the misuse of authority over the case. In this context, Perma No. 4 of 2015 has imposed restrictions on the authority of the TUN Court in prosecuting the abuse of discretionary authority.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhmad Firdiansyah ◽  
Wachid Hasyim ◽  
Yonathan Agung Pahlevi

ABSTRACT In accordance with the mandate of Article 23A of the 1945 Constitution, all tax stipulations must be based on the law. To carry out the mandate in accordance with Article 17 of the Customs Law Number 17 of 2006, the Director General of Customs and Excise is given the attributive authority to issue reassignment letter on Customs Tariff and / or Value for the calculation of import duty within two years starting from the date of customs notification carried out through a mechanism of audit or re-research. To examine the application of these legal norms, there are currently Supreme Court (MA) Judgment (PK) decisions that accept PK applications from PK applicants and question the legality of issuing SPKTNP by the Director General of BC. This study uses explosive qualitative analysis to analyze the issuance of SPKTNP by the Director General of BC. The results of this study indicate that the Supreme Court is of the view that the issuance of SPKTNP by the Director General of BC is a legal defect, while DGCE considers the issuance of SPKTNP by the Director General of BC according to the provisions.Key words: official decision, reassignment letter, DCGE  ABSTRAKSesuai amanah Pasal 23A Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 Segala penetapan pajak harus berdasar undang-undang. Untuk menjalankan amanah tersebut sesuai Pasal 17 Undang-Undang Kepabeanan Nomor 17 Tahun 2006 Direktur Jenderal Bea dan Cukai (Dirjen BC) diberikan kewenangan atributif untuk menerbitkan Surat Penetapan Kembali Tarif dan/atau Nilai Pabean (SPKTNP) guna penghitungan bea masuk dalam jangka waktu dua tahun terhitung sejak tanggal pemberitahuan pabean yang dilakukan melalui mekanisme audit atau penelitian ulang. Untuk meneliti penerapan norma hukum tersebut dewasa ini terdapat putusan Peninjauan Kembali (PK) Mahkamah Agung (MA) yang menerima permohonan PK dari pemohon PK dan mempermasalahkan legalitas penerbitan SPKTNP oleh Dirjen BC. Penelitian ini mengunakan analisis kualitatif eksplotarif untuk menganalisis penerbitan SPKTNP oleh Dirjen BC. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa MA berpandangan penerbitan SPKTNP oleh Dirjen BC adalah cacat hukum, sedangkan DJBC beranggapan penerbitan SPKTNP oleh Dirjen BC telah sesuai ketentuan.Kata Kunci: penetapan pejabat, SPKTNP, Direktur Jenderal Bea dan Cukai.


Author(s):  
V.C. Govindaraj

In deciding cases of private international law or conflict of laws, as it is widely known, judges of the Supreme Court in India generally consult the works of renowned English jurists like Dicey and Cheshire. This volume argues that our country should have its own system of resolving inter-territorial issues with cross-border implications. The author critically analyses cases covering areas such as the law of obligations, the law of persons, the law of property, foreign judgments, and foreign arbitral awards. The author provides his perspectives on the application of law in each case. The idea is to find out where the judges went wrong in deciding cases of private international law, so that corrective measures can be taken in future to resolve disputes involving complex, extra-territorial issues.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-271
Author(s):  
Emile Zitzke

In this article, I trace the development in the law of delict of recognising general damages claims on account of psychiatric lesions with the aim of making suggestions on how to transform it. Using the tragic case of Michael Komape as a springboard for the discussion, I argue that even though the Supreme Court of Appeal has recently brought clarity on the law on psychiatric lesions, more transformative work still needs to be done. More specifically, this article contends that the constitutional right to bodily and psychological integrity might require us to rethink the high evidentiary threshold that courts have set for proving the element of harm in cases related to psychiatric lesions. I argue that this can be done in at least three ways: First, by very cautiously bringing about a development that would involve protecting victims of psychological harm whose expert witnesses are shown to be inadequate despite all other facts indicating the existence of a psychiatric lesion. Secondly, by lowering the requirement of “recognised psychiatric lesion” to “grievous mental injury”, in line with similar arguments made in England. Thirdly, and most controversially, by acknowledging that perhaps the time has come for our law to recognise claims for so-called “grief in the air”.


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