Promises in Equity and at Law: Proprietary Estoppel after Guest v Guest
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| Author | Alexander Waghorn |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12815 |
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Modern Law Review
DOI:10.1111/1468-2230.12815
Promises in Equity and at Law: Proprietary Estoppel
after Guest vGuest
Alexander Waghorn∗
Under the doctrine of proprietary estoppel, a promise made to another that they will acquire
a right in the promisor’s land can give rise to a legal remedy, if the promisee has detrimentally
relied on that promise. In Guest vGuest, the Supreme Court was asked to settle a long-running
debate about how judges should go about fashioning that remedy. The Court held that the
claimant’s award should be whatever is required to alleviate the unconscionability constituted
by the promisor’s repudiation of their promise.How that is to be determined will vary from case
to case, but Guest vGuest makes clear that the starting assumption is that the promise will be
enforced.This note sets out the approaches of the major ity and the minority, and then discusses
a number of issues raised by this decision.
INTRODUCTION
In Guest vGuest (Guest),1the Supreme Court set out the method for
determining what remedy to award in response to a successful claim in pro-
prietary estoppel. Andrew Guest’s parents had promised Andrew that he would
inherit a sucient portion of the family f arm so that he could operate his own
farming business. When Andrew and his parents later fell out, his parents made
new wills which did not leave Andrew any rights to the far m. The ingredients
of a proprietary estoppel claim were made out: Andrew had relied on his par-
ents’ promise to his detriment by continuing to work on their farm for many
years at low pay, rather than seeking employment elsewhere. The important
question was to what Andrew should be entitled. In the High Court, Andrew
had been awarded a lump sum payment, calculated to represent(after tax) 50 per
cent of the market value of his parents’business, plus 40 per cent of the market
value of the title to the farmland.2That award was designed to give eect to
Andrew’s expectation that he would inherit some of the farm, but meant that
the parties (and the rest of the family) could have a ‘clean break’without being
forced to live or farm alongside each other.3The Court of Appeal then refused
to interfere with the High Court’s award.4
∗London School of Economics and Political Science. Thanks to Mar tin Dixon, Rory Gregson, Julius
Grower, Rachel Leow, Timothy Liau, Nick McBride and Nick Sage for helpful comments and
discussion.
1 [2022] UKSC 27.
2 [2019] EWHC 869 (Ch).
3ibid at [286].
4 [2020] EWCA Civ 387.
© 2023 The Author s. The Modern Law Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Modern Law Review Limited.
(2023)86(6) MLR 1504–1516
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License,which per mits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited,the use is non-commercial and no modications or
adaptations are made.
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