Taylor v Dickens
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 12 November 1997 |
| Date | 12 November 1997 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Before Judge Weeks, QC
Chancery Division
Equity - promise - court has no power to enforce
Where a party made a promise which he subsequently broke in circumstances which could be regarded as unconscionable, unfair or morally objectionable, the court had no general equitable jurisdiction to interfere to enforce the promise.
If a plaintiff believed that he would be granted a right over another's property in the future, for instance a promised legacy under a will, in a situation where the promiser still had a right to change his mind, in order to establish the requisite unconscionability for proprietary estoppel, the plaintiff had to prove that the promiser had created or encouraged a belief that he would not exercise that right and that the plaintiff had relied on that belief.
Judge Weeks, QC, sitting as a High Court judge, so held in a reserved judgment in the Chancery Division dismissing an action brought by Robert Taylor against Kenneth Clive Dickens and Marian Telford Dickens, executors of the will of Gertrude Emma May Parker, for a declaration that he was entitled to the net residuary estate of Mrs Parker.
Mr Roger Evans for Mr Taylor; Mr John Ross Martyn for the executors.
HIS LORDSHIP said that in 1988 Mrs Parker told Mr Taylor, who was her part-time gardener, that she intended to leave him her house in her will whereupon he declared that he would not receive any payment for his gardening or the other help he provided thereafter.
Mrs Parker subsequently executed at least three wills in 1991, 1993 and 1994, in which she left her residuary estate to Mr Taylor. In 1995, however, she made a will leaving her residuary estate to someone else. She did not tell Mr Taylor of her change of mind, preferring, as she put it to third parties, to "take the coward's way out".
Mrs Parker died on November 18, 1995. Between 1988 and November 1995 Mr Taylor, who had a full-time job as a lorry driver, provided care for Mrs Parker in many ways and received no remuneration for his services in the expectation that he would receive the house on Mrs Parker's death. He now claimed to be entitled to the residuary estate.
Mr Evans put his case first in contract. His Lordship, however, found that the claim in contract failed for four reasons:
First, there was no agreement. In 1988 Mrs Parker stated what she intended to do and then Mr Taylor stated what he intended to do in that event. The same...
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