Great expectations: Guest in the Supreme Court – case preview

Guest and Another v Guest [2020] EWCA Civ 387; Guest v Guest and Another [2019] EWHC 869 (Ch)

The doctrine of proprietary estoppel was last considered by the House of Lords in Thorner v Major [2009] 1 WLR 776 more than a decade ago and the issue of remedies for proprietary estoppel has been troubling the lower courts ever since. This term the issue will be considered by the Supreme Court when the appeal in Guest v Guest ( Guest and Another v Guest [2020] EWCA Civ 387; Guest v Guest and Another [2019] EWHC 869 (Ch)) is heard on 2 December 2021, by Lord Briggs, Lady Arden, Lord Leggatt, Lord Stephens and Lady Rose. As mentioned in a previous issue, the particular characteristics of farming families make for fertile ground for successful proprietary estoppel claims (see Cumber, H, “Spilt milk? Proprietary estoppel on the farm”, Trusts & Estates, March 2018, at pp 2018, 1–3). It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that when the doctrine reaches the highest appellate court again, it is in the context of a farming family.