EQUITABLE COMPENSATION AND DISGORGEMENT OF PROFIT. Edited by Simone Degeling and Jason NE Varuhas. Hart, Oxford (2017) 340 pp. ISBN: 9781509901463. Hardback £80.00.

This is an excellent collection of essays on equitable monetary remedies. It originates from a conference at the University of New South Wales, but the contributions are pertinent to those studying, researching and practising in this area of the law in England. Broadly speaking, the essays can be divided into four groups: four chapters focus on the personal remedy triggered by unauthorised dispositions of trust property; four more address equitable compensation in other contexts; three deal with gain-based remedies; and two are concerned with remedies for dishonest assistance and knowing receipt. For the purposes of this review, each group is considered briefly in turn.

The chapters on unauthorised dispositions of trust property should be approached with English and Australian contexts in mind. In England, a new course was set in Target Holdings Ltd v Redferns [1996] AC 421. Lord Browne-Wilkinson held that the trustee is not always liable to restore the property or its value to the trust come what may. Rather, at least in some circumstances, the trustee is liable only for the losses caused by that breach. Much ink has been spilled in analysing the decision. Before Target Holdings, orthodoxy was that the remedy, called “falsification”, in substance constituted an “equitable debt”: a primary obligation to restore the trust in specie or in value, regardless of loss. Writing extrajudicially, Lord Millett sought to re-explain the result in Target Holdings on that traditional falsification basis ((1998) 114 LQR 214) and that reinterpretation appeared to be adopted by the High Court of Australia in Youyang Pty Ltd v Minter Ellison Morris Fletcher [2003] HCA 15; 212 CLR 484.

However, the most recent edition of the leading Australian text on the subject, Heydon, Leeming and Turner, Meagher, Gummow and Lehane’s Equity: Doctrines and Remedies, 5th edn (LexisNexis Butterworths, Chatswood, 2015), recognised that Target Holdings constituted a “clear change in the law”, and “has quite some attraction” in not requiring a trustee to pay more than the extent of the losses caused (at [23.210]). It posited that Target Holdings created a “no causation defence” to any claim for breach of trust for misapplication of trust property, and that Youyang should not be understood as standing in the way of its adoption in Australia. This was then followed, in England, by the Supreme Court’s decision in AIB Group (UK) Plc v Mark Redler & Co Solicitors [2014] UKSC 58; [2015] AC 1503, in which Lord Toulson and Lord Reed robustly readopted Lord Browne-Wilkinson’s compensatory approach to remedying unauthorised dispositions of trust property.