CURRENT LEGAL PROBLEMS LECTURE SERIES 2012-13

Understanding Equitable Estoppel

by

Professor Ben McFarlane
UCL Laws 

on Thursday 21 February 2013, from 6-7pm

Venue:
UCL Law Faculty
Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0EG

Accredited with 1 CPD hour by the
Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board (Pending)

About this lecture:

The lecture will consider two notoriously complex areas of English law: promissory estoppel and proprietary estoppel. It will be argued that these doctrines can only be understood if we identify and isolate the specific principles that lie behind their operation. It will be suggested that each doctrine is in fact based on a number of distinct concepts. It is, therefore, a mistake to look for a broad principle that underlies either doctrine; and it would be a bigger mistake to unite the two doctrines into a single category of equitable estoppel. Rather, we should carefully examine each of the specific principles behind the doctrines. In doing so, we can identify a crucial and often overlooked point: English law recognises that a claim can arise to prevent one party suffering a detriment as a result of his or her reasonable reliance on another's promise.

About the speaker: 

Professor of Law at UCL as from 1st July 2012. Formerly Reader in Property Law and Trusts at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Author of "The Structure of Property Law" and co-author of "Land Law: Text, Cases and Materials". Currently working on "The Law of Proprietary Estoppel", due to be published by OUP in 2013. I am particularly interested in the interaction between the law of obligations and the law of property and I have published widely on property law; the law of trusts; unjust enrichment; and estoppel.