Re Diplock

Ratio Decidendi

ข้อเท็จจริง

Caleb Diplock's will directed his executors to apply the residue of his large estate for 'such charitable institution or institutions or other charitable or benevolent object or objects' as they should select. Treating the gift as valid, the executors distributed some £200,000 among 139 charities. The gift was in fact void for uncertainty, because 'charitable or benevolent' was wider than exclusively charitable, so the residue passed on intestacy to Diplock's next of kin, who sought to recover the money wrongly paid away.

สรุปคำพิพากษา

The Court of Appeal held that the next of kin, as the persons truly entitled to the residue, had two routes to recover the money the executors had mistakenly distributed to the charities. First, a personal claim in equity against the wrongly paid recipients to refund what they had received — an equitable action available to an unpaid or underpaid beneficiary or next of kin against those overpaid — though limited, because the claimant had first to exhaust their remedy against the executors, with the recoverable amount reduced accordingly. Second, a proprietary claim by equitable tracing into the funds in the hands of the volunteer charities. The court held that tracing in equity was available against innocent volunteers, but subject to limits: it failed where the money had been spent improving the charities' own land or paying off their debts, or had otherwise become so mixed or dissipated that it could no longer be identified, because it would be inequitable to charge an innocent volunteer's assets in such cases. The case is the leading authority on the personal equitable claim and on the limits of equitable tracing against innocent recipients.

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