Choses in action are valuable assets. This has compelled (and been facilitated by) the development of legal devices such as equitable assignment to allow holders of choses to deal with them, inter vivos. This thesis makes two claims. First, equitable assignments are best conceived as a composite of a bare trust and an atypical agency where the assignee is authorised to invoke the assignor's entitlements against the obligor to the chose assigned, as the assignee pleases. On this conception, equitable assignments merely entail generation of a new set of jural relations as between assignor and assignee. Though these affect how the jural relations between assignor and obligor are to be discharged, those jural relations are left intact and unchanged, unless the requirements for 'statutory' assignments have been satisfied. Second, 'statutory' assignments are regulatory in effect. Where a debt or other chose in action has been validly equitably assigned and the requirements in s 136(1) Law of Property Act 1925 are satisfied, the specific entitlements set out in sections 136(1)(a), (b) and (c) will be passed from the assignor and transferred to the assignee. But that is only true with regards entitlements falling within those provisions, and the set of entitlements listed therein is not exhaustive. The composite model of equitable assignment, and the clarification of the nature of 'statutory' assignment, reduces confusion over their operation and effects. Accordingly, this thesis tempers the urge towards legislative reform of the law of assignment: reform may not be needed since the law is not incoherent, though it is certainly complex. And if targeted law reform to simplify the law on assignment be thought desirable, it is as well to know what one is reforming.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:730137 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Tham, Chee Ho |
| Contributors | Stevens, Robert |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9cf7420b-b3d5-4c15-b15d-daaa9892d951 |
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