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The Infiltration of Equity into English Commercial Law

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Abstract

From time to time attempts have been made to introduce equitable doctrine into the corpus of English commercial law. For example judges have occasionally flirted with the concept of a ‘trust of a promise’, in an attempt to enable C to sue on a contract which A had made with B for his benefit. But the flirtation was shortlived. There was no easy answer to the artificial question, when did B hold his right to sue A on trust for C? 1 Moreover, to imply such a trust would generally be quite inconsistent with the commerical expectations of A and B since it would mean they could never vary or revoke the terms of the contract even though they might subsequently wish to do so.2

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B. S. Markesinis J. H. M. Willems

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© 1980 J. A. Jolowicz and G. Jones, Cambridge, England

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Jones, G. (1980). The Infiltration of Equity into English Commercial Law. In: Markesinis, B.S., Willems, J.H.M. (eds) The Cambridge-Tilburg Law Lectures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4414-0_2

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