In Davies v Davies ([2016] EWCA Civ 643, CA (Eng)) a couple owned a farm. E, the second of three daughters, lived with the parents for much of the time up to the time of her final falling out with them. E worked for her parents for little money, although her pay increased over time. Around 1985 her parents assured E that the farmhouse would be hers one day. She later fell out with them and moved out. E was later reconciled with her parents but left the farm a second time after another falling out. E’s father induced her to return by promising that she could live rent free in the farmhouse. During part of the time that she lived away from the farm she worked as a technician for a company that provided livestock reproduction services. She enjoyed this work and was good at it. After a third dispute with her father, he brought proceedings to evict her from the farmhouse. She relied on proprietary estoppel to claim some interest in the farmhouse and / or the business. The Court of Appeal had already considered the threshold question as to whether or not E had established a right to some form of relief and decided that she had (see here ). These proceedings were concerned with the question as to the form that the relief should take.
The parents made an offer to their daughter which was calculated by reference to the detriment that she had suffered in reliance on the assurances made to her. The daughter sought a much larger sum that would reflect the expectations induced by the assurances. Lewison LJ gave the only full judgment. He set out some core propositions about the law of proprietary estoppel ([38]). He referred to the controversy as to whether expectations or detriment should govern the relief ([39]) and the proportionality test in Jennings v Rice and to the idea that in ‘bargain’ type proprietary estoppel cases the claimant’s expectations represent a starting point([40]). But where to go from there if the expectation is only a starting point? Lewison LJ accepted the following proposition suggested by counsel as a useful working hypothesis:
‘there might be a sliding scale by which the clearer the expectation, the greater the detriment and the longer the passage of time during which the expectation was reasonably held, the greater would be the weight that should be given to the expectation.’ ([41]).
The assurances that had been given envisaged that the daughter would work long-term in the family farming business but she left the business (twice temporarily and then permanently). This was not like the decades-long arrangements in Gillet v Holt or Thorner v Major ([48]). While E had some expectation of inheriting the business, it was relatively vague and so a modest award would suffice ([64]). Modest sums were also in order in respect of the ‘non-financial detrimental reliance’ involved in giving up her work as a technician and moving from her home to the farmhouse ([65] and to reflect the delay in receiving payments relating to past expectations (such as her unmet expectation that she would be a partner in the farming business) ([68]). So a modest uplift from the payment offered by the parents was in order but this would fall far short of a payment that would reflect E’s expectations in full.
Michael Lower
