The death of Lord Millett in May has deprived England of one of its very best legal minds. As a barrister—and latterly as a QC—in private practice, he was a brilliant chancery specialist, and this inevitably led to his elevation to the High Court, to the Court of Appeal, and then finally to the House of Lords.
Many of his decisions—written with great clarity and concinnity—are well known to lawyers, and not just chancery lawyers. There was Foskett v McKeown [2001] 1 AC 102, [2000] All ER (D) 687: a case, as Lord Millett put it, that was ‘a textbook example of tracing through mixed substitutions’, and he provided an important analysis of the tracing property rights. Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley [2002] UKHL 12 was an important case in trust law and dishonest assistance, and although he was in agreement with the outcome of the case (a firm of solicitors, through a variety of circumstances, ended up holding
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