ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some considerations of the idea of fiduciary duties. Fiduciary responsibility is open-textured and yet it is supported by some inflexible legal rules. This combination ensures protection for the beneficiaries of a fiduciary relationship once they have been accepted into the categories of fiduciary duty. As Lord Browne-Wilkinson has held: the phrase 'fiduciary duties' is a dangerous one, giving rise to a mistaken assumption that all fiduciaries owe the same duties in all circumstances. We may think that one human being owes another human being some indefinable, quasi-moral obligation to try to save her in such a situation, but whatever form that obligation may or may not take; it is not a fiduciary obligation. A mortgagee acquires extensive powers of repossession and sale of mortgaged property. In Sidaway v Governors of Bethlem Royal Hospital the Court of Appeal suggested that English law would only use fiduciary liability to protect the economic interests of claimants.
