Judicature and Accounts

Abstract

This chapter identifies some of the effects of the Judicature reforms in the realm of accounts. The first is one lingering consequence of the Judicature reforms for the application of fiduciary principles to agents. The second concerns the recognition of a claim for equitable compensation for breach of trust without any need for an account to be taken. The third is whether that separate claim for equitable compensation should operate on principles different from those that would otherwise govern the taking of accounts in equity. The chapter argues that the Judicature reforms have caused us to forget important aspects of the history of equitable accounting, which need to be recognised as we think today about how to deal with questions like what principles should govern the award of equitable compensation for breach of trust. While history does not necessarily provide the only available answers to the questions that need to be answered today, it is in the nature of a common law system that its principles are anchored by reference to what our forebears did and so it is, at the very least, useful to understand that history.