Trust – Partnership – Liability of Trustees – Companies Act 1862 (25, and 26 Vict. cap. 89).
The City of Glasgow Bank was a joint-stock company formed in 1839 under a contract of copartnery, and subsequently incorporated under the Companies Act 1862.
Where notice of a trust appeared upon the register and in the other books and papers of the company, and stock belonging to the trust-estate had been transferred from the truster’s name to that of the trustees by means of a registered transfer- held that the trustees were partners of the company, and as such were personally liable for its debts, alike in questions with creditors and inter socios.
Observed per the Lord Chancellor (Cairns) that among the purposes of the permission to notice trusts on a register of shares was (1) to mark it as the property of a particular trust, that being a benefit to the beneficiaries rather than to the trustees; (2) to publish the fact that the shares are held on a joint-account with a right of survivorship; and (3) perhaps to enable a retiring trustee to remove his name from the register more easily than in the case of other joint-owners.
Judges:
Lord Chancellor (Cairns) Lord Hatherley, Lord Penzance, Lord O’Hagan, Lord Selborne, Lord Blackburn, and Lord Gordon
Citations:
[1879] UKHL 483, 16 SLR 483
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Company
Updated: 04 July 2022; Ref: scu.637956