Lac Minerals v. International Corona Services

Aquaculture Corp. v. N.Z. Mussel Co. Ltd.

There has already appeared in this Quarterly one very interesting note by Mr J. D. Davies1 on Lac Minerals Ltd. v. International Corona Services Ltd.2 It is not therefore necessary to restate the facts of the case. It will be recalled that Lac had found and developed a gold field on certain land, and that the Supreme Court of Canada held that they were constructive trustees of that land because they had acquired it by using Corona’s confidential information. In the view of the minority, an alternative ground for the same conclusion was that Lac had bought the land in breach of fiduciary duty. The purpose of this short postscript to Mr Davies’s note is only to assert that there is room for another view, at least in England, as to the desirability, or indeed the availability, of the remedial flexibility asserted by the Supreme Court. Mr Davies encourages that flexibility. He says:

There is much to be said for the majority view that, if a ground of liability is established, then the remedy that follows should be the one that is most appropriate on the facts of the case rather than one derived from history or over-categorization. While considerable certainty is undeniably to be required in establishing an initial liability, predictability of remedy need not be accorded so high a priority. The majority of the judges in the case who came to the conclusion that a remedy in rem was appropriate are, therefore, to be congratulated on awarding it on and because of the facts themselves. There is no need to pass the facts through further conceptual hoops before a particular remedy is selected.3