Knowing Receipt, Equitable Proprietary Rights, and Duties of Due Administration

In Byers v Saudi National Bank (2023) the Supreme Court held that a claimant in knowing receipt must have had a ‘continuing equitable proprietary interest’ in the property received by the defendant. Such an interest is commonly understood to include a right to benefit from the property, yet successful claims in knowing receipt have often been made by claimants without such a right. We therefore propose a different interpretation of all the knowing receipt cases: that a claimant must have had standing to enforce equitable duties of due administration against the person from whom the defendant directly or indirectly received the property, which duties were breached when this person transferred the property to the defendant or an intermediate party. Knowing recipients are liable to return the property if they still have it and to compensate claimants for loss. Each liability is justified when the policy of upholding duties of due administration outweighs the policy of protecting a transferee's interest in security of title.