Exercising Powers : Proper Purposes Rather than Best Interests: Fiduciaries and Eclairs

This paper, (2016) 30 Trust Law International 71 discusses the constraints and influences on a trustee board imposed by the proper purposes doctrine in English law. This is the rule (not limited to fiduciaries) that any exercise of a power or discretion must be for a proper purpose or at least not for an improper purpose (formerly called 'fraud on a power'). This is easy to state, but in practice can be difficult to apply. The rule (or limit or doctrine) is easy to state and has been called 'trite law' (Millett J in Re Courage [1987]). But it can be rather tricky to apply in practice. The paper discusses the doctrine in the light of the UK Supreme Court decision in Eclairs Group Ltd v JKX Oil & Gas plc [2015] UKSC 71. A second paper (at (2016) 30 Trust Law International 159) goes on to look at the proper purpose rule in the context of occupational pension schemes