Pensions, Contracts and Trusts: Legal Issues on Decision Making

by David Pollard

This is a topical area for the courts, which have moved to imply various limitations or tests on decision makers powers and when they can be challenged. This is made more difficult for lay users and lawyers alike in that implied restrictions are (by definition) not apparent from the words of the relevant contract itself.

These limits are applied by the courts not just to fiduciaries (such as trustees or directors), but also to non-fiduciaries (eg banks and employers).

Recent case law
· Pitt v Holt (SC) – trustee decisions (2013)
· Braganza (SC) – contractual discretions (2015)
· Eclairs (SC) – directors proper purposes (2015)
· IBM UK Holdings v Dalgleish (CA) – employer powers under pension plans (2017)
· British Airways (CA)– pension plan – proper purposes (2018)

The book reviews the relevant doctrines
· Interpretation rules
· Proper purposes;
· Due consideration of relevant factors
· Full perversity (no reasonable decision maker)

640 pages, Hardcover

Published July 9, 2020

About the author

David Pollard was born in London in 1942. He fled accountancy to the University of Sussex where he was given his three degrees in literature, the history of ideas and philosophy. The last of these, a doctorate, was published as The Poetry of Keats: Language and Experience and is a Heideggerian interpretation of the poet. He has also published other work on Keats, as well as on Blake and Nietzsche. His latest, Nietzsche’s Footfalls, a meditation on the philosopher and his times, came out in 2003. He has also reviewed extensively in the fields of both philosophy and literature. Pollard’s work has appeared in: Omphalos, Tears in the Fence, Aletheia, Fire, Eratica, Eclipse and Poetry Monthly. He is curently writing a comparison of Blake and Nietzsche.