ABSTRACT

Most significantly, this means that a mere debtor-creditor relationship will not do. Suppose I lend you money or otherwise give you credit (for instance, by paying in advance for goods or services). You are prima facie free to do as you like with the money you receive. From the moment of payment it is yours, not mine: all I have is a claim in personam against you.71 It follows that even if you fail to repay me or satisfy my claim, I have no rights either to the money in your hands or to any proceeds of it. Take the facts of Re Goldcorp Exchange Ltd.72 Hopeful, if avaricious, investors paid Goldcorp in advance for bullion to be purchased and stored on their behalf. They were allocated none, or at least a good deal less than they were entitled to. When Goldcorp collapsed, the Privy Council quite correctly denied them any claim against assets in fact purchased with the money they had paid.73 The only way such a claimant can succeed is to show that, exceptionally, the person to whom he paid his money did not become absolute owner of it but held it on (for example) a ‘Quistclose trust’,74 so that the payer retained an equitable property in it.75