Key Facts
- •Richard and Adrian Winter (claimants) and Philip Winter (defendant) are brothers who worked in their parents' market gardening business.
- •The business assets included Bower Farm, which was sold for £7.8 million.
- •The parents assured the sons that the business and assets would be divided equally among them.
- •Richard and Adrian worked in the business for many years with relatively low pay, while profits were reinvested.
- •The father left his estate primarily to Philip, leading to the proprietary estoppel claim.
Legal Principles
Proprietary estoppel requires a representation or assurance, reliance, and detriment.
Thorner v Major [2009] UKHL 18
Equity prevents unconscionable conduct; detriment must be considered in the round, and whether it would be unjust to disregard the assurance.
Gillett v Holt [2001] Ch 210; Cobbe v Yeoman’s Row Management Ltd [2008] UKHL 55
Detriment is required for a proprietary estoppel claim and is not a narrow concept; it need not be quantifiable.
Gillett v Holt [2001] Ch 210; Jennings v Rice [2002] EWCA Civ 159; Guest v Guest [2022] UKSC 27
Where there are both benefits and disadvantages from reliance, the court must weigh them against each other.
Henry v Henry [2010] UKPC 3; Davies v Davies [2014] EWCA Civ 568
An appellate court can only interfere with a finding of detriment if it is perverse or clearly wrong.
Davies v Davies [2014] EWCA Civ 568
Outcomes
Appeal dismissed.
The Court of Appeal found that the judge had implicitly weighed the non-financial disadvantages against financial benefits, concluding that the detriment suffered by Richard and Adrian outweighed the financial benefits received.