ABSTRACT
So the importance of proprietary estoppel is that it allows persons to claim that they have rights where the ordinary formalities associated with the transfer of land have been ignored. However, without formalities to guide us, it is particularly important to be clear about when such rights arise. It is important that it is not left to the discretion of the court. As Lord Walker declared in Cobbe v Yeoman’s Row Management (2008) proprietary estoppel ‘is not a sort of joker or wild card to be used whenever the Court disapproves of the conduct of a litigant who seems to have the law on his side’.
