Background
Pride Planning Limited sold funeral plans funded through the Pride Planning Trust. After funeral-plan providers became subject to FCA authorisation, Pride Planning elected not to pursue authorisation and agreed in October 2022 to transfer its business to Dignity Funerals Limited, an authorised provider. Thousands of customers opted into Dignity plans and purported to assign to Dignity their interests or claims concerning the Trust.
Pride Planning later asserted that the customers’ transfers triggered cancellation fees payable by the Trust. After two trustees who considered that claim misconceived were purportedly removed, the replacement trustees obtained new legal advice and agreed within weeks to pay Pride Planning the Trust’s entire assets in settlement. Dignity and a former customer, Veronica Lake, brought claims including breach of trust, knowing receipt, dishonest assistance, conspiracy, unjust enrichment, and relief under Re Diplock. At this interim stage, they sought a proprietary injunction, a freezing injunction, disclosure, and an order appointing Lake to represent customers whose Trust interests had not been validly assigned to Dignity.
The Court’s Holding
The Court appointed Lake under CPR 19.9 to represent all customers who elected to transfer their rights to Dignity, insofar as those rights were not validly assigned, and directed amendment of the particulars accordingly. Individual proceedings by thousands of customers would be impractical, and their materially similar interests made representative treatment consistent with the overriding objective. The Court also found good arguable cases that the Trust had ceased to be discretionary following its amendment, that the assignments were effective, and that the asserted cancellation-fee claim was baseless.
The Court granted a proprietary injunction against Pride Planning, Pride Planning Holdings, and Inertia because the applicants had established a good arguable case in knowing receipt and the balance of convenience supported preserving the disputed assets. It found no good arguable case in dishonest assistance, unjust enrichment, Re Diplock, or unlawful-means conspiracy on the case presented. It refused the freezing injunction because the applicants had not shown a real risk that any respondent would dissipate assets; allegations of dishonesty and refusals to provide information did not, without more, establish that risk.
Key Takeaways
- The ruling was interlocutory: findings that claims or defences were arguable did not finally determine the assignments, the Trust’s character, liability, or the merits of the cancellation-fee claim.
- A proprietary injunction may preserve identifiable trust property or its traceable proceeds where knowing receipt is well arguable, even though the evidence does not support dishonest-assistance liability.
- A freezing injunction requires respondent-specific evidence of a real risk of dissipation; a viable substantive claim, alleged dishonesty, or refusal to volunteer information is insufficient by itself.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the different functions and evidential thresholds of proprietary and freezing injunctions in trust litigation. Property-specific relief can be justified by an arguable proprietary claim and the need to preserve disputed assets, while a general restraint on dealings requires separate proof of a genuine dissipation risk.
It also demonstrates how representative-party procedure can preserve beneficiaries’ claims where the effectiveness of mass assignments is disputed, avoiding thousands of substantially identical proceedings without deciding the assignments’ ultimate validity at the interim stage.